Paranoia on Top of the World, Ma

Standing stoned on a balcony at Stanford, prestige in the ivy
climbing up the wall behind me and beneath the grates under my feet.
A doorway, more like a window in its aspect, to the back of me, unlatched
to allow a regaining of fraudulent residency by staying with the girlfriend’s friend.

Twelve thirty at night, doors wide open to design projects
and three-day weekend whiskey drenched witticisms
from the stiff upper lips of trust fund babies in such slack jaw
surroundings as a forest. Huddled in, four people crowd

a single with the sounds of bootleg Downey Jr. blowing it
as an all mumbles shade of the greatest detective, the one the Batman
was modeled from, on computer flat screens before loft beds.
They could afford to see it in theaters. Piracy indeed.

Laughing, thick without curves-girls in their earth tones stare curious
out at the intruder, with just the right modicum of malice swirling
in their sockets. Can’t help but sashay So Cal as possible with my hood
on like a carjacker. Fuck, I don’t care. I’m just trying to get back to the room.

Got lost, like the Donners, looking for that set of impersonal digits: 1-O-5.
Numbers that mean a piece of floor to borrow, thankful backaches
and odd dreams that leave you ambivalent the next day about these people
and the malaise that comes with money enough to have veganaise

as an option in the dining hall for a panini or a gourmet bacon maple log.