shiny tokens made by madmen late into the night with feverous dreams of riches
beyond the scope of comprehension or understanding or even reality,
while teeming with bulging eyes staring at blue screens into the early morning,
blood shot,
juiced up,
ready to press Start, Pause,
then Rewind
to a beginning when it all made sense, then redacted for the sake of posterity
waves of sand soothing over a dilapidated body
as it wades through absence located on aisle 3
by the Oreos and Lay’s Chips, trademarked preservatives
clogging hallways of veins mounted sky high
in pastel light counting how much money will
it take to forget what you’ve seen here
clarity defined by the worst moments stacking up one after the other,
in abandoned parking lots of shopping malls gone to ruin,
while paying dividends by absent gods sitting on marbled slabs to be presented with
preguntas nuevas, sparked by arsonists smoking joints lit by nitrous oxide ready to ignite
into a new stratosphere, a new benchmark
as no one counts on their fingers anymore because of all the buffalo sauce lathered all across their extremities,
after a night of chicken played against the toothless friend no one wants to talk about,
muttering expletives to the moon and expecting cheese
Fred Aiken Writing 