)with apologies to Frank for stealing his stylee(
there is a great big ball of I can't seem to give a fuck weighing down right on my shoulders. i'm the Atlas of apathy. running around each and every day making a slight change in my life, accomplishing things at a snails pace that my peers did 10 years ago. what in the world can I complain about next?
poem for smiley:
i am
beck's muse
jerry's dean
shorty's fuse
losing's team
time's bitch
sarcasm's pimp
need's itch
strength's limp
memory's loss
mind's flaw
work's boss
progress's crawl
winning's shame
losing's friend
different's same
starting's end
got it?
manicmanicmanicmanicmanicmanicmanicmanicmanic
don't whisper opium
even for a second bathtub or the nine
nieces and nephews around it
don't plagiarize time
if the offer is rowses or violents
you'll regret the lack of feeling
that you'll carry around for the
rest of your days
don't mumble prophecy
I think that's clear enough
don't bake with misery
or scramble popularity and justice
karma is rife with popular interpretation
and still never gets a second date
don't waste what you can eat
don't sell what you can kill
don't break the fourth wall
don't make a list of directives and call it poetry
there is no real fear in darkness
like a boogieman breathing radon
into the lungs of treasured infants
mistakes and evil plans come together
over me and you in places like work
and the elevator at the mall
slipping on the sidewalk before christmas
you were sure no one was looking
except you died with 1/8th of a second of laughter in your ears
posthumously decorated like every other corpse
minus the whipped topping and tears of loved ones
you watched the flames at your toes imbibing their fetish
finally, the expectation met the fear
breaking every tradition held by people
since man's creation of god
sleep well,
lie still,
unthink
unbelieve
die happy
ran 8 miles of milk
to feed at your teat and bake
things just right for the cake
held fast to the rail
of the speeding, young plane
for the chances the engineer'd take
lost all self-denial
at a librarian's house
staring three pool tables deep
wrote a lookingglass note
on a tooth by her head
after lingering long in her sleep
crossed the country to pray
and the mission to dance
with the cops on my heels the whole way
but i never found words
like the ones that you said
or the ones that I want you to say
dollars, nighttime, digits, hollers
midnight, problems, screaming, meaning
sit-ups, flagrant, mission, losing
word plays, playful, horror, truly
what do these words mean to anyone
