You really are alive. I know sometimes you think
you’re not. That you’re a dream in the head of a stone
or a bit of air whistling through a crack in a window
forty two stories up. But you’re reading a god damned poem,
so you better be alive, otherwise what a waste
of consciousness or its doppelgänger, jazz tuba.
Philosophers say we can’t prove we’re alive,
but have you ever taken your suicidal car or bad back
to a philosopher to have it fixed? Years ago,
in the unemployment line, I met three philosophers
and one king and one forest that had been bulldozed
to make way for houses made from another forest
that needed a lawyer if anyone ever has. I have,
I don’t know about you. We should have sex,
or lunch, or hope, just to get even with the abyss.
Not the movie. I like the movie. The other abyss.
Also goes by the void, or the darkness
made of the feeling there’s nothing after this,
the shitty houseguest who won’t leave, who ate
an entire black hole for dinner and complained
when there was no emptiness left for dessert.