An inconsequential nightly ritual.
I walk stiffly, nearly robotically into
my room and remove my boots.
I have a drink, maybe not.
And then I do drink.
An then I do drink again.
And then another one.
I pick away obsessed on a
guitar that’s also drunk and out of tune.
I put on music and braid my hair,
then dance a twirl untethered and erratic.
I hate a lecture more than anything.
When you want a friend, but they
are a lecture instead.
No, I don’t care that the world
is deathly ill right now.
I don’t care about racism.
I don’t care about the
homeless and poverty.
Sometimes, I just want to be a person
with interests insignificant against
the daunting scope of humanity’s
failures and futilities.
I want to talk about music,
or sit in silence and just listen to it.
I don’t want a story more poignant
than it needs to be.
I don’t want an intense
philosophical discussion about
division and the exploitation of the soul.
I want gentle, easy repose.
A moment amongst the things we
have to choose to ignore.
They are so overbearing at
every point in time that they
have become our middle school
chemical drill.
For a moment, let us not
kill the struggling spirit.
Kill laughter.
Kill fantasy.
Kill dreams.
Kill hope, in all
its expectation.
I want to talk about love and
heart-wrenching personal sorrows.
I want to write haikus with a body,
alternate the lines we write.
I want to sing over two chords
that I wrote three other songs over.
I want to kill skepticism.
I want truth and authenticity.
I don’t want to keep boots
on the ground.
I want to take my shoes off methodically
and walk on waters romanced with
oil slicks and turtles tangled in or
choking on plastic while bathed in
the twilight of a pseudo-nuclear sunset.
This is my most humble ask.
I want to throw a glass
clear across the room.
I want to startle cabinets.
I want to sob until
I am inverted.
I want to leap from buildings
and onto rails.
I want to fly.
I want to kiss
the vacuum of space.
I want a fucking knife.
I want to fall asleep
to a violin.
I want to be buried
during the rain.
To only an appropriate
amount of tears.
I want to burrow
in a sweater.
I want to feel
a little less yearning.
One day, maybe.
One day, surely
Such tiresome exhaustion.
Your spittle on the floor,
your blood in careless specks.
The poise of a man set shortly free.
You screaming like a child,
plastic bagged, and making noise.
Your saliva in the fabric of his jacket.
One man ran you for your bike.
And I ran you for your cigarettes.
Split them between different
and dried palms.
The ache that came with
the soothing of time.
My compassion is farther
and still even farther between.
I can not love with this hard heart.
I can only build a monument
and worship under the cover of night.
A proud heathen in the chapel.
With zeal, I praise and blaspheme.
To have a tomorrow.
And then, to have another one.
To stay ahead of tempests.
To mind the gap.
Dark tucks of night.
The silence of the witching hour.
Startles from sleep.
Very little maintenance.
Doodles as anodynes.
Black and white placebos.
Smiles reflexive,
the half-life of a mask.
Large hearts, and unsent letters.
Measuring tapes for the intangible.
Missing persons on the sides of wine boxes.
Little feet dancing ghost-like under grapevines.
Fastened in your side,
a lovely wound you pinch
to affirm an existence.
I love you like a belt buckled shut,
a challenge inside you.
Try me, in the quietest room.
Try me, during the most
starless of nights.
Try me, in secret.
Try me, opened.
Try me, in morse code.
Try me, in a minor key.
Try me, in a world without mirrors.
Try me, when eyes are falling away.
Try me, in a dangerous placement.
Try me, without excuse.
Try me, without expectation.