I keep thinking I
see my friends
wandering
in the uncanny
everything
in the snuff of stale sweat and piss
in the heavy heat
in the hyper ruin
in the land of magical bullshit
secret kings and client states
dust
sun
white noise
silence
pacing
the mythology
the time
gathered up and arranged here
SKELETON CREW
the weight of the body
listing
*
in the privatization of stress
*
flood my mouth and blood
with mutagen
*
in the twelve thousand year present
in the eyeball grind
in the weird rain
*
the truck routes
the flight paths
*
I want to keep
fewer microphones
amplifiers
in the house
*
all these
voices
flooding
the rooms
these histories
context
meshed
we will find us in the heavy
distorted
the fragment people
*
bundle our heat
we will be ours
Robert Balun is an adjunct at The City College of New York, where he teaches creative writing and composition. His poems have recently appeared in TAGVVERK, Tammy, Prelude, Barrow Street, Poor Claudia, Apogee, Cosmonauts Avenue, and others. His debut collection of poems, Acid Western, will be published by The Operating System in 2020.