We’re going to win every fistfight
against every vulgar bronze giant in town.

You worry so much that you forget
to change out of your nightgown
when you go out for smokes
in the middle of a blizzard.

You think all my coughing fits
actually mean something very serious
and very awful is going to happen to me soon.

I love you,
but you just have to stop assuming
that a riot at a zoo three cities away
is some kind of bad omen
for when it’s profoundly critical
that I travel for no special reason.

Fear isn’t even your one and only great motivator.
One time, remember this, you couldn’t find
someone who hadn’t hurt you in years,
and you spent three weeks in bed with a cold
I’m pretty sure you didn’t even have.

Dreaming is not a reliable source of news.
It’s not a type of therapy that challenges you
to wake up after you’ve hit the ground.

I’m patient. As much with you
as you were with me
when you were the healthy one.

Don’t worry. Don’t mourn the death of plants
you forgot to water when you were four.

I’m patient. I love you. I can make myself scarce
for weeks at a time. And you can find other things
to make you shake so violently in the middle of a store
that three men and two women immediately fall for you.

You don’t have to wonder why I lie about being well-rested.
And don’t imagine that I’ve promised my lungs, heart and liver
to a man working on a retirement plan after years of wrestling alligators.
He didn’t promise me twenty bucks for the set. And I’ve never read
about the stars aligning every six hundred years
for someone who is willing to go to the casino,
and bet everything on a twenty-dollar roll of the dice.

None of that happened yesterday,
and it certainly won’t happen tomorrow.

Have I ever gone a day without thinking
I ought to call you?

Right,
you don’t know for sure.

Figure this though:
Even if I was promising my body
to an immoral, illogical kind of science,
don’t you think it would be kind of funny?

Anyone who gives me twenty bucks for that
clearly doesn’t know what I do in the pursuit
of earning a living, staying scarce and hoping
you’re out of bed for a change.

05/04/2012

Posted on 05/04/2012
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