today i may rain-walk to a post office,
a way to kill time.
i could maybe go grunt some labor,
carry materials and dig holes,
though that’s a slaughtering i resist.
go earn some money, prove
your value. “you can’t work
36 straight hours with no sleep?!”
chuffs the fading man on the fishing boat.
what a fucking loser.
go earn some money,
prove your value.
a friend uses a lot
of exclamation points in his
messages to me, i am not
excited. is he?
then of course the tired line about
“a form of punctuation between
the stark black-eyed stare of period
and the idiocy of exclamation point”.
i don’t have to explain
myself, i can write
in riddle and accept that
there will always be such howling
chasm between us, we;
people.
perhaps i choose this version
of life, the oblivion of poem,
as a way to preserve my biases.
people don’t read; do i?
well, yes.
and people aren’t excited, which
i know as i am not
excited. well, no.
i wake into screaming hope
of morning, heart singing like a razor
blade, rupturing with a shredding
excitement.
how quickly we dull!
though of course that is just i.
what a wonderful form of joy, to choose
writing and also defiance; to think
in incomprehensible fragment,
a derisive lack of focus.
if you do not earn money,
what value are you?
a walk to the post office crosses
a bridge, over a river that is
in-season for dead salmon.
that is a killing we can agree on,
the stench rising to our falling
eyes. the excitement
has long worn off, so i replicate
its bodily feeling with caffeine and
the sweetness of disappointment.
i will walk just enough
to kill, but not enough
to die. if we are to prove
our value, is it enough,
to be alive?
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