Untimely #10 - Why! A Quit, Of Sorts.

Washed my face in the rivers of empire;

Made my bed from a cardboard crate

Down in the city of quartz.

Pleaded with every agency of temps,

Harangued the centre of jobs;

Brandished my Curriculum Vitae at every turn,

And got nowhere in the city of quartz.

I dined in the soup kitchens of pain!

Ogled the grand patisseries of the French quarter,

And began to quietly starve in the city of quartz.

Attempting to prostitute myself to the children of Caesar,

I was flung into the prison of punishment.

And there sodomised for scraps,

In the bowels of the city of quartz.

Toothless, wretched, my metaphors scabbing over,

I am sold, out right, to an ageing actor:

Tears, joyous and otherwise, are ignored by all in the city of quartz.

I wish I’d never moved here.

My diseases are turning my mind to dung.

I’m decanting my sense into the toilet and becoming a moron.

I’m fitting in to the city of quartz.

I’m in love with my actor,

Though I’m sure he’s cheating on me,

With some new tourist to our city of quartz.

I’m leaving.

I’m going to kill myself while I have the strength.

I can’t take any more of this.

Fuck you, you stupid old city of quartz.

Untimely #10 - City of Quartz

Parakeets swoon in

To roost on naked pylons

Under massed moon clouds.

Grass scratched tarmac seethes;

Freeway, sagging, crocodile

Spined, under moon clouds.

Corrugated cheek,

Cold against cool cardboard pulp,

Turns toward moon clouds.

Stray tobacco fronds,

Straggling on blistered lips, I

Stretch below moon clouds.

All extremities,

Finger tips, yellow toe nails,

Shiver down moon clouds.

Wrist knuckles click back

Through frayed cuffs, forage pockets,

Forgetting moon clouds.

Night time is my time,

Needle blind, tooth and eye time,

Hunger strikes moon clouds.

And out, out into,

Into quartz, into quartz tides

Under quartz moon clouds.

The dune teeming city

Subsumes me, the rowdy spume,

Moon clouding moon crowds.

Untimely Stimulus #10 - Guest Stimulus

The first Guest Stimulus is submitted by Spencer Tapia:

"Washed my face in the rivers of empire;
Made my bed from a cardboard crate
Down in the city of quartz."

- From "Sunken Waltz" by Calexico

Respond!