America, It's Too Loud.

America, it’s too loud.

Is Wall Street occupied or just busier than usual?

Are your parades for change or just cacophony?

Jesus Christ, America.

The veins look blue, but I’m told they’re red.

Color is an illusion, much like reality, so why does it have to be such an issue?

Is there nothing left but voices?

What about words?

Consonants and vowels.

If it’s all about noise, then let’s scream with each other and not at.

It’s all gibberish anyway.

It doesn’t make sense, America.

Are we good men, or has feminism damned each and every one of us?

America, am I a child?

Tell me.

I want to think for myself, but not if there’s going to be this much shouting.

America, am I in the wrong century?

Is this a frat prank or a good lesson?

I don’t like your universities, they’re just making sausages,

and some of us are too willing to be ground up.

Nothing has any flavor any more.

Your cigarettes have left me too content.

If my fingers are going to smell, then I want to earn it.

America, why is Richard Branson trying to own our skies?

Why have we given up on space?

I’m in the city, I’m used to it, but people in overalls like to look at the heavens.

We should let them know what’s up there; not just look, too.

Americana sounds too foreign to me.

Why are we bathed in it?

Why did we give the dustbowl to Mumford and Sons and their pub friends?

America, I will spend my life trying to change you, like a Mafia wife;

always so happy when you stay the same.

America, where is Dr. Kinsey when you need him?

It seems like time’s rich for him, right now.

America, I’m sick for you.

You are the cable drama ingénue that will cheat on me as much as I cheat on her and still end up looking like the good one, the sexy one.

I will end up being a better person, somehow, for loving you.

America, your mountains distract me.

Your lakes speak like oceans

and your oceans are merely a buffer.

America, it’s too loud.

Oak Park Breakfast

OAK PARK BREAKFAST

BY ROSS BERMAN

It's a thursday morning gold mine.

Not like tuesday's, never like tuesday's.

Tuesday's gold mine bled first.

Bled, then burned and painted the buildings golden brown.

I watched it from a steam ship.

First the blood, then the flood,

up the sky and over the buildings.

Yellows and oranges and blues and reds,

up and up and up.

I took a picture.

It was much more violent, than to the naked eye.

Apocalyptic photo,

doomsday on a cheap movie poster

or an album cover.

I'm an aimless hornet's nest

searching for a corner booth.

Holy! Holy! Holy!

We put eggs on things here.

This is America and we put eggs on things.

This is the way the world ends,

the future feeds the past.

Caffeine and Other Cardinal SIns

CAFFEINE AND OTHER CARDINAL SINS

BY ROSS BERMAN

I heard Run, and said why not.

American Dream: A skinny white mistress leaves me feeling all too pleasant. That's all I want. Just someone I can taste in my lungs, in my hair, my teeth, my lips; someone I can smell on the tips of my fingers.

I heard Run and said why not.

And I slept sound. 

I almost lost an eye to a Mexican block party.

I've been a good boy, I deserve control over how I feel.

Or whatever everyone else is having.

Purgatory: A clean bathroom floor on a bad night. Cold sweat, room spun and then some. Jesus freak still gets to ask questions. Feels like porcelain and smells like bile, peroxide.

And when my head swelled,

I heard Run and said why not.

And I was Lazarus.

Corned Beef Hash and Eggs go together better than Milk and Honey.

There's nothing like battery acid.

Tangy, pulse-racing, jet fuel acid.

Young And The Restless: Anything that should've died off years ago. Petroleum products, fossil fuels. A malt with two straws.

I carried a broken heart in a wounded knee for days.

I heard Run and said why not.

She threw herself at me and I yammered on.

Hydrate Naturally: Just because it's good for you, doesn't mean you know where it came from or that it tastes any good.

I kept walking until I could articulate properly,

up Lincoln, down Clark, down broadway

until the words were just right.

I blew out my knee.

I heard Run and said why not.

Light up.

Light up.

UNTITLED

UNTITLED

BY ROSS BERMAN

I miss Mountains. 

I miss campfire. 

I miss smoke and forest and trains and I miss Mountains. 

Large, grand, warm, I miss Mountains. 

I miss Sundays after the apocalypse and pancakes on the wrong side of satisfying. 

I miss stranger's kitchens and kisses stolen with street urchin skill. 

I miss fire and tomatoes and October and I miss Mountains. 

I miss dry leaves under damp lovers and baseball dugout cliches. 

I miss adolescent assuredness. 

I miss being camera-ready and headstrong naive. 

I miss horsepower and crab grass and sunscreen scented escapades in air conditioned basements. 

And I miss Mountains.

AMERICAN BREAKFAST

AMERICAN BREAKFAST

BY ROSS BERMAN

American Breakfast.

Steak and eggs.

Golden Nugget.

Small tomato juice, never had, new world.

I believe in the enemy of my enemy.

I believe in the sun in my eyes.

I believe we are wild creatures.

Desirers of impact and shakers of trees.

Shakers of trees, hacking at bark and stripping our souls.

The twisted metal and jagged brick inlays, layered, tempestuous, stuck and sturdy.

Cold, hard and porous, bricks are bone and steel is cartilage.

Make me glass, transparent and fragile.

American Breakfast.

Low grade beef and river rapid yolks.

Corner booth, on the side.

Where did you go, Extraordinary?

Rise and fall, tempestuous brick, timeline, LED, beeps in a voicemail, concurrent,

cold, hard and porous.

The twisted metal and plywood windows.

American Breakfast.

Red meat and sunny potential.

Paddy fried ‘tatoes.

Snuck some tabasco in my tomato juice, burned my lips on the new world

and stuck back with water.

Square one, chewing ice and 50s diet.

Late night.

Corner booth, on the side.

American Breakfast.

Cigarettes and Dopamine and lights and sounds and glass and steel and vicious, vicious brick.

New brick.

New brick doesn't have any of the jagged fun, Extraordinary.

All neat and tidy, white bread and water.

American Breakfast.

Newspaper stained fingers forking flesh and membrane freely.

Corner booth, on the side.

Track mark chips in the tines of Tonto's spear.

Mississippi River.

Grape jelly.

Tabasco and salt and butter and heavy metals.

Chemically fresh and tap water pure.

It hasn't been hot, Extraordinary.

Cooled down before I fried up

brown and sweaty.

American Breakfast.

American Beauty.

Where did you go, American Dream?

Tabasco tomato juice, I will burn away until I've seared you from my lips, Extraordinary.

Where did you go?

I lost you to Chinatown.

Sections of brick and jade with black tar cement, cooking up an escape.

Why did I stay in America?

Where's the chance, Extraordinary?

I had one, now it's gone.

American Breakfast.

Table scraps and rogue potatoes.

Jagged fun, I wanted jagged fun.

Welcome to neat-laid brick, fluff cement and wrought iron wrapping and framing and majesty.

American Breakfast.

Mack truck reality, crumbling marble and red mountains.

Peak and valley and peak and valley.

Tabasco tomato, WE DON’T HAVE LEMON.

We have sandcastles and snowmen, chewing ice because shape counts for shit.

Extraordinary, I called you the Extraordinary Girl.

Fireworks are just cinders that put on a show before they rain back to earth,

sprinkling dust and smoke and ash in your eyes, like early spring in some Lynch nightmare.

It's the heat, darling.

Tagging toes and sweating hogs.

Fever chills and cold showers.

WAKE UP.

American Breakfast.

It's all hearty and earthy and charred and tough and leaky, get yours now.