It’s doing me good to realize
I am not the one driving the bus
but I still pump the imaginary brakes
every bump we hit
It’s doing me some good to see
my steering wheel is just a toy
but I still grip at ten and two
and try to turn it
It’s terrifying to know that
I am not the one driving the bus
but I am the one constantly trying
to take command
No wonder I don’t live inside my body–
my body is not a fun place to be
it is full of shakes and pains and shifting beats
Of course I live inside my head–
it’s the only place I control
it’s the only place where I can suffer as much as I want
My tiny, one-person boat
out on the ocean, calm and smooth
takes bumps like an amateur wrestler
one wrong move can knock me out
I can’t survive in chaotic winds
I was not built for fluctuation
I’m a scarecrow, bored on a pole,
who knows he couldn’t walk anyway
In another life I would’ve been
a poor therapist –
if this life hadn’t hurt me so bad
I would’ve wanted to heal
more of those who’d been hurt
and I wouldn’t have understood
anyone’s pain.
Life is a group assignment
which I heartily detest–
it doesn’t remotely approach justice
that I should bear the emotional toll
for other’s choices which I cannot control.
Let me alone in my green hunting cap,
I shall never love a soul and
I shall never have to worry
about their pyloric valves
when mine is plenty delicate enough.
You are the chess game I can’t win
the heart outside my body I can’t repair
I’m watching it mourn and I cannot help
I’m watching it die and I cannot stop
I see the end of this game like a coming train,
the secrets that will remain with me,
the years I’ll keep writing to you in the universe
with no more response
You were with us, ugly and heavy,
for several years, we never
had the time or motivation to haul you
out to the street so instead we just
kept stuffing you with plastic shopping bags
ever since Kevin moved out and decided
his girlfriend had better furniture.
I guess you probably saw a lot, every time
we rearranged the living room, always
ending up sweaty and too tired to care
that you were still hanging around. But
we’re getting down to the stuff on the bottom
of the list, it’s time to have something they call
an entertainment center, and god what a bitch it was
to disassemble you and leave you on the curb,
have fun at the landfill, I’ll be somewhere similar,
I’m sure, in a couple years
you need something, alright
but it’s not what you seem to think
awareness is a gift, I guess
when you’re so close to the brink
but you’ve known all this time
exactly how to pull it back
I’ve heard this song so many times
you love your own soundtrack
a memory, a fantasy
it doesn’t matter which one
they’re both dead in the past
but the funeral’s never done
the wine to aid your grieving
didn’t keep you from the brink
just from jumping, just from living
a rosary dropped in a drink
and you want a napkin to dry your eyes
because existence makes you cry
well I’d like a set of earplugs, please
the best that money can buy
I cried when I first read her fate
as a child of 15 had no business-
an angel, firm through all those years
500 pages of David’s blindness
I held her as the standard, as a man
had intended for me, for all my kind-
to give and wait and love and give
as God himself designed
But I’m no Agnes Wickfield
I’ve got a tale that is all my own
I was born to be a heroine
and Charles Dickens died alone
If love was a field of green, why shouldn’t we be cows?
Fill up four stomachs with all that abundance,
why couldn’t we thrive on that redundance,
get fat off the wealth that nature allows?
And if love was a waiting trap, why shouldn’t we walk in?
Recite the tale to our sons and daughters,
then come with heads held high to the slaughter,
why should we lament what our end has been?
