Walking Dreams and Running Lights

I watched when a bad actor made it impossible for
the poor to have
decent lodging because crime
was a growth industry whose time had come
I watched when he created the homeless realm
when he opened the institutions and set them free in the streets
of the new institution
I watched the men who helped him
I watched the businesses turn normal life
into a stress factory treadmill with new speed settings
I watched the world compress and become a hungry mouth
I watched the world walk into its own mouth and
chew itself up
and spit itself out
and walk away in pieces searching
for what it could not find...

I saw the beginning of the end in real time
I saw a generation of vipers drinking
two thousand dollar bottles of wine in New York City
at lunch
I saw the cocaine run like sand through an hourglass
I saw it fuel a bacchanalia of blood stained money
rubbed on young girls breasts
that had been pierced with nails in search of a crucifixion
I saw bodys mutilated and branded and
Tattooed without identity
Identity would not come
The mob was still the mob
a mob of mutilated and branded and tattooed nobodies
and the mouth was still open.

I watched and then I ran

I saw a moment of great possibility
There was a moment and then
the moment was gone
and I saw
I saw the monkey son of the pedophile king march out of Texas
I saw his shiny red baboon’s ass
I saw him prance and strut and I
saw him drink blood from a silver cup
I saw children squeezed in the wine press
and their cries distilled into liquid
I saw it mixed with tears and
saved in wooden kegs
for the party at the world's end
I saw dead people
I saw the same men who had been the other men when
the whole thing started but
it started long before in the minds of the mob
from the beginning when the wheel began to turn
and spin until
it became a wheel of fire that
you could see with your eyes closed
I saw each separate moment follow-
each separate moment
I saw the undead wipe their asses with documents
that had held the world intact
I could not read the words any more they were
buried in shit

I saw people watch and play with their hair.
I saw people frown and stare into their cell-phones
I saw people shrug and go to the movies
I saw people drop their pants and bend over
I saw them wait
I saw them wait and wait and wait

I saw them scream that they were waiting
but nobody came

I saw people looking in the mirror and nobody looked back
I saw endless loops of porn
I saw stars and stripes moving in the back drop
I saw it become impossible to believe and I saw it
get worse.

I ran

I ran away because

there was no power on Earth or
inside of me that could prevent people
from achieving what they desired
in order that suffering might ascend the throne
and hold them in his lap
and tear their flesh for the pleasure of his court

I saw the creatures of the dark wrap themselves in false light
and proclaim the presence of something
that sat inside the mouth

And they marched into the mouth
they ran, trampling one another on their way
into the mouth.
I saw bodies ooze like toothpaste
through chain link fences
that lined the highway into the mouth

They did not see a mouth
They saw a fairy land of things
They saw things glowing and glistening
and beckoning and they wanted to touch the things
That were not there but only waved
like luminous swamp angels from the always
unreachable beyond

The soundtrack changed
The music got hard
the laughing faces and hard eyes
watched the children undress
and then they did what they wanted to
to the children
they did it with lights and cameras
on a stage set inside their minds
they went all the way back
and fucked themselves before they could fall in love

the mouth laughed
It sounded like bells
everything sounded like something it was not
everything looked like something it was not
everyone pretended to be someone they were not
it was not hard to lead them into the mouth

In the massive cities where the millions
upon millions rubbed against each other
from the friction of their passing
there came a heat that ignited into awesome fires
that swept along the boulevards
and avenues
and it was a conflagration of hunger that was
fanned by a whirlwind

water became more precious than gold
death became entertainment
the enormity of suffering became scenes in a picture book
those things that were the hinges of civilization
those virtues that had maintained the balance that
kept the underworld behind the magic gates
these things melted
and were re-forged so that whatever they had been
was irrecoverable and
could not be remembered

and they watched and they laughed
and they walked into the mouth
they looked at themselves in the mirror
they painted the face of death with
lipstick and danced with the dying flesh
in imaginary ballrooms
they dined with corpses and toasted their success
they were important
and then they were forgotten
and they never knew
they never knew
they looked back and could see only
a grainy movie playing something that was
and they could not remember if it had happened
or not...

And I ran and I hid and I woke up
and it was only a dream
but it was still happening
like the wheel of fire behind closed eyes
and i woke up again and
again and again
and so did the dream
the dream had been asleep too
each time in a different place
and
the dream was coiled like a serpent
and the serpent rose up and up and
the dream became a cape that concealed the serpent's body
and in the black night of the cape
you could hear cats outside the window
that looked out on the dream
they were calling
and there were noises and shapes
and everything that was a part of the dream
changed the dream
and far away where it could not be found
was the point of the origin of the dream
and it was longing
and it sang in the oceans like separated lovers
it sang between the space that could not be traversed
by those who longed for what was there
and it penetrated everything
and it made everything yearn
and the dream made the object of desire out of itself
and then it walked into the mouth

and the mouth was the gateway to the moon
and the teeth were the transport of the flesh and the data
into new objects of desire that went in search
of the faces that looked into the mirror

and some few
some nameless few became the stars
and they were self-contained and they did not long
and they shined into the dream
and they knew nothing but to shine
and all of their joy was in the shining
and they could not do more than bathe the
worlds in their light for ever and ever

they could not cry for all the inexpressible sorrow and loss
they could not change the course of things
they could only shine

and I ran
and I ran out of the market and
into the places where no one goes
and there was no one
and all that it was- was to stop
all that it was- was to stop
wanting anything
and the pain would go away
all that it took was to know that the pain
was in everything
and all that the pain was
was everything changing
for as long as there was a dream
things would change
and it would hurt
and everything would hurt
and somehow it was worth the pain
to hurt enough to feel alive
even though it was only a dream
that the stars shined into

it was so much more
than could be known by anything but the silent stars
who knew the place of infinite return
who were the running lights of history
who were the beacons of memory
in a forgotten land
who were the signposts and the heralds
of every golden age
that got trampled underfoot by the mob running into the mouth

and
it went on forever
it just went on and on
until it went on and on...