I don’t want to be exposed
to anything I can’t talk my out of.

Understand me?

I don’t want to fall in love with any woman
who doesn’t talk to me first.

Is that okay?

I don’t want to be present at a city-wide fire
because I don’t want to be exposed as a coward
who couldn’t save anyone but himself.

You know,
I actually don’t care what you think.

I’ve gone mad,
I’ve gotten mad
and I’ve tried discount whiskey on ice
over old sitcoms in an expensive hotel suite.

Sometimes,
I’ve even stood perfectly still
at the heart of where they tell me
everything is supposed to be going on.

It’s just been a big letdown.
Not even good enough for the last page
of a local newspaper.

And speaking of newspapers,
speaking of Internet sources
and people on the streets who really know
what’s going on from top to bottom,
I don’t think any of it can be trusted anymore.

Could be all that Mayan nonsense,
or just we’ve all spiritually gotten together
to completely disbelieve the fact
that we’ve lasted as long as we have.

Even the cab drivers are turning on us.
Lord knows I’m in deep to various banks and mobs
from all the money I’ve spent trying to get
those thugs to take me to the end of town and leave me there.

They never do.
They never listen.

A hundred bucks,
two thousand bucks,
all I get to do is point and click
and wind up right back where I started.

A childhood home
where the water in the basement
is making it impossible to enjoy
everything I can see from the attic.

Or one of those hideouts
where I draw comic books with stick figures
and wait for my song to come back to life.

I don’t know.
I deeply suspect that there just aren’t
enough hours in the day,
but I also wonder what I would do
with a couple extra lifetimes.

Probably wouldn’t be spectacular.
But I’d have the best-organized
DVD collection this side of the funny farm.

I’d finally pick up some skill at crossword puzzles.

01/30/2010

Posted on 01/30/2010
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