my dreams are haunted

flying underground, through collapsing subway tunnels. heading up to the street through the remains of Utica Station, dodging improvised hammocks and harassed starving squatters. out to the burned and shot out buildings. gray street, the air tastes like grit, smoke hangs heavy, and hard eyed people with clubs roam, but I'm too fast for them and soon I'm above even the smoke, hurtling through the sky downtown, hoping the little bit of civilization I left weeks ago is still there.

the apocalypse has always been. it just took a while for us to notice.

Not a Poem

You sleepwalk through life
hungover from a million firebombed dreams
while around you a city crumbles
they're demolishing the east side
making room for a parking lot
the cars just keep getting bigger
soon they'll control everything
and we'll never have to leave
the air conditioned bliss

Escape

He climbed right out of the mirror one day, when I was staring into it. Suddenly, I wasn't looking at myself, but at some other, and he was scrambling over my sink.

I stood agape, as he jumped to the floor and grabbed my wallet out of my pocket. He whispered, "Finally, I'm free," and ran for the door.

Main and Allen, Facing South

I wander the city. Fog hangs heavily, and the heights of even the shorter buildings are lost to me, plunging into the gray ceiling. No one is around, even though it's early on a Friday night.

I stand in the middle of the deserted street, at the top of a small hill. It slopes gently downward for a mile or more, until it ends at the tallest building in town. The shabby storefronts repeat themselves endlessly, fractally getting smaller off into the distance. I wish for a bike. It'd be nice to coast that distance, getting smaller as I go, and finally vanishing somewhere downtown, like the end of a movie.

Survival, Organic or Not

The city stood, battered but still alive. Whole districts had been lost to fires, or to the rains. The parks were either burnt out and desolate, or overgrown and abandoned. Downtown, two tall buildings were all that remained of the former skyscrapers. They leaned on each other like two drunks staggering home, mourning the loss of their compatriots.

But there were still people in the city, and that's all that mattered to it.

Alone at a Party

The house stood in elegant disarray, piled jackets and shoes threatening to invade the narrow walkways between the people packing the rooms. The conversations, mainly on the topics of how good it was to see everyone again and how dreadful the end of semester tests had been, were never quite drowned out by the deep bass thump of the music. In the humid kitchen, the lofty arcs of ping pong balls betrayed which of the guests were not well versed in applied physics. I wove through it all, unnoticed by most.

Mutations of an Object

The phone rang. It was one of those old black ones, with an actual dial. No buttons. He knew it would be her and he agonized over what to say. Unbearably nervous, he picked up the phone.
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The phone rang. He hesitated, sensing bad news. He let it ring on while wondering who would let him down this time. The machine got it. "Hi, I'm not here, leave a message," his tinny voice recited. Beep.

"Hey, just wondering if you were still around." It was her. He raced to the kitchen and picked up the white receiver.
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The phone rang. He wondered which of the stacked boxes it was in. He hoped not the bottom. "Should've just left it in my pocket," he said.

"Yep," she replied, grinning at him. "Lucky I was here to call it for you, ain't it?"