Look: you’ll see that
a cheating spouse
and I
are ugly
because we cannot choose an
attractive child.
This is my perception.
I’m not part of the immersive
amorphous sludge of contemporary
track shorts and fucking Sperry’s.
Distraction is option one.
Escape is the second.
Activity is the third.
These are my morals.
Once I have everything,
I will strive for more
and plunge my lacerated shoulders
into a fountain greedily,
snatch my every dime and replace them
with quarters.
Wet dollars would be absurd
once I had everything.
I have
twenty-five cents.
Twenty-five percent effort.
Twenty-five times a bronze flipped
heads, heads, tails, tails,
twenty-five years old
serving twenty-five to life.
Forever twenty-five.
They will not remember that
I’m twenty-five
when I’m fifty.
I’ve heard not dying’s the goal of life;
mine is to live so I won’t.
I won’t die
until I don’t want to.
Then I’ll be in the ocean,
on a mountain,
in the trunk,
maybe in the ground
or the air,
somewhere -
somewhere less desperate.
less melancholy than
being gone.
But enough bothering the mortician!
Depression should only affect the masters,
not the slaves since
they have the beauty to fight it.
But if you are destined for me,
if each time you wish change in the world,
my shoes are on,
pull yourself together
and join me.
I cannot expect the future,
and it’s all I think about:
the parts I can’t control,
the parts I won’t miss.
When I’m 25
is the question’s end, my dear,
and I hope it ends
when my best is flattened,
and I promise then
that I’ll leave.
