Nightly, empty, luminous ballrooms roll back in your skull 
I resigned myself to all the disappearance 
I was sure the cops [bad word] calling
Some sick shivering morning

I live in Newark now where cars speed away 
And weekend freebasers bury their stems
In shaded groves and muted clearings

In Philadelphia, we didn't know
Clammy hands and beaming thresholds

And I'm visited by naked reality
In the higher gloss of the cars that cut in front of me
And depression is [bad word] to what's in store for them

Having hitched across America
Like an itinerant laborer 
Or a serial killer on pulsing arterials

I numbly recline 
In a filthy slicked lawn chair
As our garage yawns behind me with tunnels 

The pinkest sky I'd ever seen 
Still pocked with dirigibles 
And flying machines that opened up 

I thought it'd begun hailing but amethyst and glass 
Were raining down from an unmarked aircraft
Covering the cooling tar totally 
In manufactured street sheen 

I've been finding clipped-off Parliaments everywhere lately 
I take it as a sign that you're around

See J passed away
For the first time in June
And the last time last night in the Warren

As a warm, round, mournful sound 
Flooded my room 

Like blood does from the faucets of pitch-black bathrooms during adolescent summoning rituals