Let me tell you about the Southern heat,
about the Sun constantly setting in the Chattanooga mountains
and the slow-speaking, slow-moving poets
holding slowly your attention
for a 20-minute, 20-page
piece taking you further into the abyss of absurdity.
Let me tell you another thing,
about a woman
and a man not myself
that could never love each other
more than themselves to find themselves
spending every night in their separate beds.
Love in their mirrors, love in the clicks of your own heels.
Love in molesting your childhood ideals with a delicate slash
on the chalkboard of persistence.
Let me tell you, sirs and ma’ams,
that I feel constitutionally out-of-place in a theocratic
culture, embedded unknowingly in
indoctrinating practices, always on-call.
I am out-of-place and center stage,
recycling on recycled sayings
and endless day-ins, day-outs.
Let me tell you
that today was depressing
even if you do not listen,
full of raining broken windows
and not talking to anyone
about my damp interior
space of helplessness.
Let me tell you
that I loved you once
but took it back because winter was too hot and summer,
well we all remember the summer heat making
men go crazy with violent shifts in tone and sun-burnt
ashtrays full of burnt-out promises that you’d change or I’d
change or we’d both stop running around in the summer heat
with sweat running down our backs, in lines that framed our very
guilt, and in the end,
all I was left with was a song called
Myself.
