Month: March 2017

unconcerned

I turned off notifications
for your posts because
I no longer know
what you’re talking about –
and let’s face it, even when
we talked almost
every day and hung out
all the time, when I
thought I knew
what you were talking about
I was more often wrong
than not, often to my own
great distress – and that
makes me a little
sad.

no longer will I
notice when you haven’t
posted anything for
three days and wonder
if you are okay.

you’re okay. maybe
you always were,
and didn’t need me
to worry about you.
either way, it’s no
longer my concern.

maybe
it never was.

the dangers of overclocking

I’m sorry
if I was too much
the other night. I was
trying to run away from
a short day full of
self-fulfilling prophecies,
chased by a headache
that I feared would ride me
like a demon all night, I
was tired and felt so weak
but I had to perform, I
had to be ON, so
I pumped up
all that energy
and couldn’t hold it,
whenever anyone spoke to me
all I could do was turn the firehose on them:
wake up
wake up
wake up
be on
be on
be on
was all I could think
and I didn’t even know
how to modulate it
so I was too awake,
too wired,
too on to be normal.

in retrospect I was
full-on obnoxious.
sorry. can’t say
I’ll be any better next time,
but at least maybe I
can be aware of it.

the headache

the headache is
your best friend. it’s
with you in the morning
when you fall into an exhausted
uneasy slumber; it’s with you
when you wake in the late
afternoon filled with self-loathing
and guilt. every time
you move your head, the headache
reminds you that your
body is unhappy with you
and your choices. the headache
thinks you need
to try something different,
perhaps. it says
maybe alcohol and
cigarettes and constant,
constant cat hair and
spring pollen and lack
of exercise and very few
green vegetables are all
bad choices if you want
your body to like you
and to give you another friend
besides the neverending
headache.

the olden days II

back in the day,
we actually felt
things.

look, I’m not gonna lie,
Western medicine was
a total fucking joke
that really wasn’t
very funny.
lots of us went around
suffering horribly
from easily cured
nutritional imbalances and
hormonal issues and
serotonin deficiencies, which
we tried vainly
to correct
by voluntarily ingesting
various poisons, known as
drugs of varying stages
of legality.

Continue reading the olden days II

now that you’ve quit

the sign at the Rite-Aid
asks, “what are you
going to do
now that you’ve quit?”

lately I’ve been feeling like
maybe I don’t want to
smoke cigarettes anymore but
that question haunts me.
what the fuck am I
going to do with myself
when the press of people
around me gets to be
too much, when I need
some air and a few
minutes to think, or
write a poem,
or when I can’t
sleep and I need a reason
to stand in the doorway
with the terrace door open
to the elements
for approximately
three minutes
and forty seconds?

Continue reading now that you’ve quit

the olden days

what was it like? well,
in so many ways
it was barbaric, but
there are a few things I miss.

what passes for food now
doesn’t taste as good
when you’re never allowed to get
really hungry. and even though
it was outrageous, savage, tragic
the way we nourished ourselves
on death and pain, there’s
something to be said
for cooking. the process
of having to make the meal
meant that it was never exactly
the same. sometimes
you’d run out of something,
and have to substitute – many
a new favorite recipe was born
of necessity – or you’d add
slightly more salt and it would taste
different. yes, I know,
now we can just dial it up,
make that lifeless carbon
taste like anything we want,
we can even override
the nutrition warnings –
as if the medical nanobots
won’t just correct it the next
time we sleep – but it’s not
the same.

Continue reading the olden days

the window III

I dreamt of sex and
woke to find you missing.
I waited, patience growing
thin, hoping to tell you
in person and maybe in
so doing, remember my passion.
but hours later, the dream
has gone and my blood’s
gone cold. I’m languishing
instead. it seems
you missed the window.

maybe that will teach you
not to stray quite so far
from my side, or maybe
it will teach me
not to dream.