Some Wasted Parts Poem by Michael Ashby

Their minds were deflating
in some sort of vacuum we had found
somewhere between home and here.
The mice ran to the edge of the road to pick up the scattered remains
of the trash we had been throwing out the window the entire trek.
Arduous Arduous Arduous
and yet so callous and careless.

The road signs were stapled together with the plastic organs
dripping with scented soaps that would-be emperors used to wash their hands.
Sanitizers!
Sanctioned by the government authorities and by the creative works of the age.
I don't recognize any of you anymore.
I don't recognize my driver, or the flashing holograms
in my bedroom.
Hundreds of thousands of employees abandoning their posts
and developing Alzheimer's because of some unknown radiation leak?
I'll believe it when I remember it.
If I remember it.

Please I beg of you make up some new words
and whittle them into my ears.
I want to love and feel and fight or stand for something new,
but these roads, on the road, are forming loose associations and I'm furious over nothing.
I'm protesting established anarchy
and I'm circling a drain that leads to impossible positions and illogical logistics.

But we can replace those now, we can repair those now,
while the mind mechanics burn different icy designs into our shoulders,
located just behind the eye.
What a date! A couples activity to shock the ages isn't it?
This waste bucket of empty skulls that litter the veterinarian psychiatrist's office.
The collar was a bit restricting I must admit.
But I'm slipping, slipping, slipping
into my drink
into the steering wheel
into the beach house and the school play.
The tree is dead, did it have leaves before?

The rats are dead, those were definitely alive before.
I remember, at least I think I do.
But our days have run into each other so quickly that they seem to remind me of the one before.
There's probably something in that.
There's probably something in here.
They can't all be ghost towns full of spirits flinging themselves off the tops of concrete altars.
I won't believe it.
I can't believe it.
If I accept such an accusation that would make us, me, murderers, psycho-neonazis!
Quit whisping designs and simply drive the ice pick in!
We never needed these knick-knack gifts,
we needed the fix
the feeling
and it's gone. It escaped with the others down the shoulders of the silly red priest
that sang songs in the bars with the other sinners.
Sucking, twirling, wasting away,
somewhere in the sand between here and there.
I have so little left to say, think, or feel about anything.