Look over across the street,
and you’ll see the apartment building
I hope to never visit again,
should I ever need band-aids,
good coffee and plenty of rope.

It was a madhouse that pulled back its mask
to reveal a zoo that used to be a pandemonium country
as large as one of those rooms where confessions
are dragged out with video cameras and medicine.

The lousy t-shirt I grabbed
on my way out the door was later stolen off my back.
after an unfortunate side-effect of skydiving
with faith instead of a parachute.

I’d only wish the whole experience on the enemies
who are better-looking and more successful than me.

It was a kiss from Marion Cotillard
compared to my long night on the eighty-seventh floor
of the parking garage that’s three blocks
past The Live Wire Café and all its menacing road show waitresses.

I didn’t have a friend in sight that evening.
Nothing to do but hope the elevators got fixed
before the hysteria reached all the people
who were hungry or had tickets to hear
an honest man try to lie his way out of the electric chair.

In the time I waited,
cities were built, casually destroyed and then mailed away
to museums on the eighty-six floors below.

Endurance hadn’t come so easily to me
since the time I sat on a bench at the bus station
and hung around until my best memories
tore the streets apart with a parade to get my attention.

I just didn’t have anything better to do
but keep to the beat of everything around me
that was still capable of imitating the polite dead.

That’s a common theme
in these stories and something like twelve thousand others.

Don’t accuse me of complaining.
Charles Dickens was right, but he should have added
how those times usually follow a deep-rooted suspicion
that you’re back to square one at six a.m.
no matter how many times you saved king and country at nine p.m.

I truly don’t know how I feel about that,
but I guess if I didn’t like it
then I would have bought a coffin-sized house
in the country ages ago.

I’m still trying to be on time
for everything that’s ten years away
from the twentieth anniversary of tomorrow.

04/18/2011

Posted on 04/18/2011
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