Took 2 valium on the outskirts
of the sea of tranquility, tried walking
the moonscape of downtown asphalt—
craters and toxic dusts drenched in false neon dusks
around the splintered band stand— 
with a skull full of animal balloons
(all my gurus are part-time clowns)—
It was tough sledding—
Their tongues licked clean the residue
of bad impulses ghosting cranial bone—
a lifetime of shortcuts through poison ivy, detours
down the road less traveled and its gauntlet
of blind curves and fresh tar—
then they hiss—the animals—
spider monkey, tortoise, tried-and-true dachshund and minx—
the balloons hiss, the hiss
is what you sometimes call tinnitus—
when a human head doubles as Noah’s ark
loaded down with illicit chemicals because the animals
all had to be sedated,
a few opiated due to the throb that blooms
from mandatory crouches—
otherwise there’s no way they would fit,
and you need every one to aspire to
that lit up lunar buoyancy—the sinewy syntax
of dollar store epiphanies transcribed in phosphors
and chemtrails,
but you fail to notice the vistas replaced
with exit signs, windows
hijacked to the landfill that smolders
perpetually just beyond your range of experience
and now every window envisions smoke
that the ants haul away—smoke as ellipses—
and your eyes scale over dull as pollen-clogged chrome
on an old junker elevated like prayers
on cinder blocks and dinged
with bug guts in ink blot stains.