People craved meth, now oxy. People
are fickle bastards at the product level,
though addiction itself is bankable
as horse shit. Has there ever been a culture
used that as currency? The things to learn
accumulate. Like I’ve been playing out a rope
behind me for years, knowing they did this
on ships to measure their speed, but not how.
And where does pleasure evaporate into?
I tried meth, oxy, coke, meditation, push-ups,
running beside the train and on the train
and into the train, getting shorter
as I get older and getting older
with an iris pressed to my forehead,
and still every animal in the forest
runs away from me. Some people
are a circle, some a straight line, others a mess
of squiggles, slashes, and ampersand-
looking deals that might be snow. Those are most
of the people I know. I’d have jumped
off the moon into a speeding car
with a noose around my neck
as I fired a round into my skull
decades back if I weren’t addicted
to words the way a plumber’s
addicted to water. Poetry has saved me
from everything except poetry. Sometimes
people ask me what poetry is. I tell them
I don’t know what poetry is, but a poem’s
an obituary trying to be a prayer.
Usually they smile the smile that means,
I wish I were cleaning crusty pans
instead of remembering
I just heard that sentence. In turn,
I smile the smile that means,
I apologize for being a fish on land
lost at sea, and we move forward
into the new awkwardness,
which resembles the old awkwardness,
but has that new awkwardness smell.