{"The Dissertation."}


hovercraft hot-boxing, i’m Johnny Rotten
cozied up in bubble baths & strung out from the OxyContin.
a fucking handful. i’m a walking, breathing dissertation
pixelated by my therapist’s notes cuz she mixed up patients.
…fixed in place with duct tape & gorilla glue,
Depakote, Lamotrigine, & Klonopin when feeling blue.
the list goes on & on with an infinite ellipsis……………………..
fists clenched, bleeding, binging; this is sickness.
oops, forgot my meds again. it’s fucking with my dopamine.
it exploded at the seams revealing all my broken dreams.
clouds standing over me. i’m staring at the solar beams. they
found me by the river channel, channeling its poetry.
they say i’ve gone crazy. they began to think this
when my doctor left a voicemail handing me my pink slip.
dreams become reality. reality is virtual.
virtue is a fallacy, but not until the curtains close…

i been
spoon-fed lab-created sugarcoated chemicals with
doctors sneaking looks at my notebooks in hopes they’re legible.
…so, yes i do attempt to find my pulse
every time they’re mesmerized by my MRI results.
…Pfizer’s favorite client funding mass production,
but my past consumption of these pills tear up my abs & stomach.
siphoning the sap of salvia for turpentine
to turbulently turn on my turbine for turbo drive.
speak in tongue, spelling alphabets in halogen;
a talent i developed in my youth to use for balancing while
sitting by my lonesome in the psyche ward for my christmas supper
at the age of fourteen, since i lost my shit that summer.
violent motions, followed by crying oceans. i
victimized myself, which then led to my neurosis.
brain dripping ooze, flipping through manic channel static
while i handle matchsticks & flick ‘em into cans of gasses…