the neighborhood tweaker shuffles, waits
chews his fingernails, pops pimples
on his knees outside the old man’s house

next door. On his more put together days
he puts on the makeshift fuckboy,
tries to erase the age in his face

with turned ’round baseball caps
and intentionally ripped jean shorts
wearing paper thin: thin as what ties

together any hallucination,  only to fade, to die
a civilization decivilizing —  burning in August
like unwatered tomato plants,

this dream dead on the vine
this alarm sounding too close to time