When drowning, do your lungs deflate, expand, or burst?
Does your heart give out, before the last bubble rises to the surface?
Is it carrying your final thought, and as it bursts in a perfect circle
Can it still be caught, and understood?

Then, let me go, let me drown,
I’ll swim down to places of danger and delight
And watch you flounder far above me,
Treading water, staying afloat.

Just let me drown. You let me down
Again and again and again
I’ll never look up to any of you, now,
Do you even know that I still exist?

No. So, let me fall
Into and through some deep and distant pool
Anything to exit the stagnant shallows
Here, alone, I’ll let my soul deflate, expand, or burst.

James at the edge of the Queen
“one for old times”
tossed the brand new bag
100cc outfits
into my lap
orange cap shinning  --
fine yellowish powder sprinkles
across grandmothers silver
flick of the Bic
sour lemon stank filled room
slow draw through a shirt string
cotton ball of choice
holding 65cc’s of uncut prop-dope
…an impossibility today –
indented  armpit skin
as the nearly clear liquid
takes on a pink tinge
the artery never fails to deliver
plunger plunged plunging impurities –
gag cough from my belly
wave crashes and sweat pours
to amped to sit still
the car calls –
miles out of the way before arrival
at her benefactors home
sweetest of faces snuggled
on a blanket pallet on the living room floor
as I feverishly pencil
bad poetry
until daybreak –
November the fourth
2002
this was the last time
these were the last actions
of a strung out needle freak
breaking new ground
by leaving the past behind –