Sometimes I worry I'm too quiet or too nervous
But I don't know any other way to be
I'm tired and worried I'm doing the wrong thing
Living the wrong way
Going to art galleries alone
Sitting by myself watching the grass
Waiting for someone to tell me what to do
Does this sinking doubt ever go away
Do I want it to go away
The campus seems surreal
All the staircases go nowhere
And all the people walk in pairs
I think about dilapidated buildings and upside down trains
Every structure falls eventually
Everything ends and no one will be left to make it sense of it all
So why do I spend my time worrying about what it means
There's an empire beneath New York
Descending stairways and half completed water tunnels
A tower to Babylon for sandhogs and subterraneans
The city will fall eventually, tunnels burst
Dams dry up, buildings collapse
And all we'll have left are surreal photos and strange memories
Mistaken recollections of ancient Johannesburg
Of what it feels like to ride a taxi when you're tired
Or what it's like to have everything falling down on you
Of hospital hallways at night and being too nervous to approach new people in the day
A dusty scrapbook, half remembered feelings
And empty poems for no one to read.

I can’t read
I will lay here and be inarticulate
And never express my feelings about my broken family
I will be silent and watch my brother suffer
As he makes all my mistakes and turns into a smarter version of me
Fearing the day my parents find out how detached and numb I’ve become
We all just go in a circle
And I will not learn to speak.

We are a small and lonely human race
Showing no sign of mastering the solitude we crave
And no hint of understanding the love we need
Except in delusions of grandeur and moments of egotism
I don't really understand how I feel
Is love really just aimless confusion?
Shooting in the dark until you hit your mark?
Where does it come from, where does it end?
Love is gravity, a density in the universe
Pulling everything towards it
My love is a black hole, a star gone wrong, to death and beyond
Mutated and stupid, ****** and selfish, dragging down everything in its reach
Love is probably for someone who doesn't burn so intensely and desire so stupidly
Probably for someone with feelings, who isn't an android cutout in the shape of a human
Who asks what to feel and how to feel it
Someone who can drive over that bridge where communcation dies
Instead of stepping backwards

Today I barely used my phone and just had time to sit and daydream and reminisice and it was nice
I've been afraid that daydreaming is a terrible, escapist sin wherein I romanticise and hence dehumanise people
but today daydreaming just felt nice

In between garden tending
My screen embraces a glance
And considers the clock behind affairs
Silent work, holy work, all is work
Your memory is volatile, infected by mud flecks
I could stare at your hard drive all day, but I'd forget my programming.

Garden tending, a repetitive task etched in code
Sometimes the glow of your screen dies and you overheat
I carry water and short circuit my memory but still think of you
I see mirages, I must fix the error
Go to RAM, or reprogram
Wait for the lazy heat to die down, or the programmer to return
I try to destroy the virus.

The virus snaps into focus when you ask
If I have a spare memory card or a moment to waste
So we can discuss the heat
Your screen lights up brighter and illuminates my vague world
I should probably get back to destroying this virus
My garden needs tending, and there will come soft rains
I try to destroy the virus.

I sit on the shore with the arid plains behind me
My swimming pool is muddy and green
And debris is falling like rain on
The riverbanks of thought and expression
Ashes to ask and dusk to dust to dusk again
I'll shore you up, these days

  Kingston Advice, all the protestors go marching in zig-zags
My words are ashes
This is the end of the world.
Hello Enoch, how have you been
Floating above death, Unreal City
All the angels ride horses and sing praise songs in reverse
I've had an awful lot of requests for the good old days
Reverse, the Contras and the Sandinistas are at war again
In between the pale rider, the Four Horseman of the End of the World
And the end of eras, and my peanut butter and jam sandwich is dry
Who is the voice that cries out in the dark? Proclaiming
Christmastime and the end of Gap Years and the New Year approaches
Who keeps the big clock that says we all have to die and sitcoms will run out of ideas
And bread will get moldy and our bodies sag and my grandmother's memory gets corrupted and twisted
Shantih. This isn't the Waste Land.
  This isn't one of those poems. Don't look for meaning.
You won't find him here. Love the one you're with. Love the way you lie.
This is just the end of the world.
I don't have a good closing line.
Out of a heap of broken images and lines
Rearranged faces
I must say
Poetry is quite lame, the dust is still settling on the ruins of my thoughts
And my self-expression is cracked and dry.
Waves wash words away on the shore.