Like Blood Does

Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull
I resigned myself to all the disappearance
I was sure the cops would come calling
Some sick shivering morning

I live in Newark now where cars speed away
And weekend freebasers bury their stems
In shaded groves and muted clearings

In Philadelphia, we didn't know
Clammy hands and beaming thresholds

And I'm visited by naked reality
In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me
And depression is nothing compared to what's in store for them

Having hitched across America
Like an itinerant laborer
Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials

I numbly recline
In a filthy slicked lawn chair
As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels

The pinkest sky I'd ever seen
Still pocked with dirigibles
And flying machines that opened up

I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass
Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft
Covering the cooling tar totally
In manufactured street sheen

I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately
I take it as a sign that you're around

See J passed away
For the first time in June
And the last time last night in the Warren

As a warm, round, mournful sound
Flooded my room

Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals