Morning ended with a car crash, the boss
was raging on about targets, and targets,
and the great sun began to flicker, another bulb,
and home was a thousand miles away,
my father had become sick again, all my lovers
had evicted me from their hearts, and the rest
read my poetry, vomited, threatened to kill;
my future was dull, still is, but especially then,
and I’d taken enough drugs
to be pounded like a mortar & pestle, teetering,
the cops began to follow baring their batons
like extensions of their cocks,
and I began to think of all the mistaken wars.

It’s been a long road to this moment, worse
than absence, and you know it, having mistakenly
walked down these streets, blood, needles, decay,
and they don’t believe me, but it was my existence,
memory having been lost, found, and lost again.

A ballerina spinning ashes, romance of a revenant,
walking circles like a madman; I was the worst of them,
mocking the dark, dangerous passion in alleyways,
hearing violence, becoming a victim of violence;
it happened, and it’s still happening.

…

Brandon Shane is a poet, born in Yokosuka Japan. You can see his work in the Berlin Literary Review, Acropolis Journal, Grim & Gilded, Sophon Lit, Marbled Sigh, RIC Journal, Heimat Review, Ink in Thirds, Discretionary Love, among others. He would later graduate from Cal State Long Beach.