Home

bright light feathers

by Gabriel Ricard

I can either catch my death out here,
or I can devote myself whole-heartedly
to climbing up to Heaven
and exchanging a few harsh French words
with the executor of my estate.

I can climb one raindrop at a time.
I can comb my hair, look just right
and know the rest of the words to the song.

Or I can do something with all this excess blood
that seems determined to drown me in thoughts
of people who are even more interested than I am
in seeing if the grass really is greener on the other side of the brink.

How does a man go about getting that fixed?

Or is it fixed already.
That’s a thought. I don’t breathe, smile, breathe
and smile before walking into a room of people
chattering like broken grandfather clocks.

I’m not begging the wind to blow me over
on the hot, busy streets of Charlotte, North Carolina.
I’m not weeping for all the sports heroes
who would have given anything to draw their last breath there.

Might quit smoking. Sometime in the next fifty years. Maybe.
Might take tap lessons. Wait until the fire reaches the fifth floor to use them.

Wait until the holy water is up to my neck
to finally accept the way some things just don’t work out,
and how some people are never going to love me
for the faults I work so hard to collect and hold on to.

A priest thinks I’m doing just fine.
The rabbi knows which pocket my one-way ticket is in.

Watch what happens when all three of us walk into a bar.

It’s not that I need the attention,
and it’s not even that I have to tell these stories
as though doing so will keep me from losing them someday.

I’m just getting as close as I absolutely can
to being sick of everything and everyone that matters to me.

I know. I get it.
To an outsider it looks like I’m doing something
completely different altogether.


05/28/2012

Posted on 05/28/2012
Copyright © 2024 Gabriel Ricard

Member Comments on this Poem
Posted by A. Paige White on 05/29/12 at 03:23 PM

I LOVE this! I relate to it soooo well. Absurdly well, in fact, lol. Kind of like when I joined Pathetic and started trying to write poetry... Now I use it as a memory aid when seizures take another bite. Thanks Gabe.

Posted by Sarah Wolf on 05/29/12 at 11:41 PM

Really love the part about getting sick about all that matters... that hits home somehow in a strange way.

Posted by Joe Cramer on 05/30/12 at 10:20 AM

... exceptional.....

Return to the Previous Page
 

pathetic.org Version 7.3.2 May 2004 Terms and Conditions of Use 0 member(s) and 2 visitor(s) online
All works Copyright © 2024 their respective authors. Page Generated In 0 Second(s)