Sifting through the trash for food

I was there for the great paint war
as a kid on Sevier avenue
vhs's rolling
the cake walk was a cake walk
like painting roses with machine gun fire
RED
sad astronaut  
sending emails with the elephant in the room
maybe i should have taken the bus west
get lost in the desert  
like a lizard licking his lips
regrowing tails in fluorescent greens
become hard
distant  
like a scorpion behind the scenes  
let the haunted  
rocky mountain streams  
sweep me away with the current
with trout
fly fishing lines
break a brown mustang  
on the great open plains of the prairie  
 
do i feed off the alley way  
graffiti art
horror of this city
syphon gas out of cars
in the cream of night
did Nashville feel like home
or a hangman's noose
there were pretty flowers flaunting  
Athena's temple towered
over Dante's inferno
that played 3 times a night
burning bulbs bit the crowd for the first time
when i had passed through
did Asheville & Chattanooga leave me  
cobalt bicycle blue
winding snake like roads
slip me in Kentucky catacombs  
lay me against an oak tree
in a field of tall yellow dead grass
swaying in the breeze of the summer sun
where the warmth hits your face
you close your eyes
and everything becomes possible
 
drinking an Ale8 soda
in between here and Lexington
playing cards with god killers
cop killers
future killers
aces up their sleeves
smiling
who walk up black
rusty  
staircases  
covered in leaves
that lead to nowhere nice at all
tearing loose gutters off houses just to  
beat some sense into people with them
kicking glass
clear
waiting for the crash cart
paddles are shocking
as i sing and arch.
areola's to the sky
 
golden eye
 
does anyone in this neighborhood dream anymore
i ask myself
walking past windows peeling
of laughing and lives
wives living
husbands giving
the power lines crisscross
like coffee creamer
in a curious way
while the crows make jailbreaks
lunch breaks
heartaches
in 1930's oldsmobile sedans
swerving to avoid prison sentences  
 
purple  
aromatic  
azaleas  
await in the afternoon
ogling at the art
on canvases cut from the  
memories of the past
proposition me for a party
and i'll pick a night with you instead
 
the butcher of Broadway
bargains for a BITE
where the covered bridges of America calendars  
clearly mark the twenty third as closed
dinner and a show
if we burn the store down
leaving nothing but the stoop
everyone smoked at