As if it mattered
I've been lost before
On the wings of a skeletal butterfly
And carried over the landscape
Of my own mind.
A little bee hive
Plush with synapsed ants
Just getting by
In feigned importance.
From above I could see
Little crypts of life
Flurrying about
As if it mattered.
Of course they were only
Shards of myself
Mirroring my broken face—
A sad god playing sick games.
Truth is just imagination;
Taking a bone and stacking
It into a mountain and naming it
As if it mattered.
There Are Others: x-mas at the bar
There are other lonelys like me,
Feigning smiles
When they could
Be real.
And the drum
Is tilted outward
“To get more rim shots” and
of course
I’ll make a joke about it to the man on my left.
“A titos martini. Wanna say anything else
about that or...
Ok, titos martini.”
A divorcee in a puffy faux-fur coat on my right.
And the singer with chops
Has a cute, wholesome voice
(And probably terribly sadistic lyrics).
“Want the disco ball on?”
“Yeah man it’s a party...
Check, mic, 1-2, check.”
An x-mas song about stealing rum and
“Gettin’ arrested, shootin’ up
coke and smokin’ ice!”
And we all listen.
The sad cherry story set to
“Walkin’ in a Winter Wonderland”
With yodeling.
Biting peckers and loaded guns—
Russian roulette—
“It’s more fun that way!”
Two pro dancers spin
Off and back
And a woman who has been
Itching to dance for years
Stands and
Claps from the sideline.
Then the divorcee spills
The contents of her
Giant purse and the dancey
Clapper picks up the pieces.
“Been drinking since noon.”
“Really infatuated with you—
I like your haircut—
I have a lot of complex thoughts—
But I’m a simple man. Welder.”
“Was gonna give my number to someone else—
But she left.”
“Hi, I’m Calvin—” he wrote
On a folded notecard.
There are others.
The sound of lonely
is profoundly rich,
like the noise dirt makes
When it skips and bounds down
the summit of a pyramidical mound.
And I still won't answer the phone
because I crave my silent self.
No amount of coaxing will make me over-appreciate
your brazen efforts enough to show up in person.
But I do appreciate the gaze.
Love is a form of cognitive dissonance after a while.
You love someone then you love to annoy them
and hate their lovely annoyingness.