February
Mirrors
should be abolished in February.
Something
about everything about me just looks wrong.
Maybe it's the light,
or the lack of it because my feet
and legs are so pale. Maybe it's
the colder weather that
seems to accelerate my beard growth. Maybe
it's
the long dark nights that make me want to get
seconds on
cookies and ice cream while binging Netflix
for longer and longer
period of time leading to
my gut striking out on it's own and
claiming independence.
No one wants to hear any of this, so I
write it here
Writing
should be abolished in February
and that kind of hum that
you hear midafternoon
in your 30 minutes, give or take, of direct
sun-
light, that can be the resonant meaning of withheld
words
unwritten, unspoken, struck,
a poet's universe
destabilized by the grammar of silence and
the
syntax of the unheard- you could see it
in
empty rooms- because if the alternative is
what I've been
writing in spades in stops and starts
which is crap for quality
and forethought
for naught then... then... then my Dad's nurse
called
to say that they needed more help and suddenly-
I know
it means nothing to you but- I needed to decide
Decisions
should be abolished in February
and memory with it. Someone much
smarter
than me defined apocalypse as what happens when
order
and hierarchy opens themselves up to their opposites
to contradiction, so, by deciding to go help my Dad is this …
it? The end? I
remember how my story started, the real one,
the inflection
of her voice, the terrible curve of her breast,
my own silence
thundering in my ears
as loud as the jet engine. In-flight movies
should have
been abolished instead of drinks. I remember we
watched
a show about a brave man saving the day and the
world
never knew anything about either the thwarted disasters
each
week, nor our hero, and yet somehow their
not knowing was dramatic
impetus enough to keep it up
and keep us watching all February
February
should be abolished this February.
Remember that clip show episode
of Community
where all the flashbacks had been made up?
February
should be hypothetical like that. Borges often
pictured
paradise as a vast library but I harbor a hope
heaven is dive
bar that I can crawl into
after a day in which the last of these
fucking stories finishes
itself, the words spring to the page and
buoy an architecture of awe
all by mid-morning and get my fair
daily apportionment of California
direct sunlight and I am just
topping off a fancy drink, like a daiquiri,
and it's always just a
few quiet minutes before the happy hour rush
and I don't need to
get a haircut, and I don't need to lose
about 30 lbs., and I'm
texting directions to a woman
who loves me just the way I am so
that I can pressure myself to
change and sabotage that
love like a cancer or my Dad,
- when the plane lands- looking
sickly and reddened
saying “you look terrible.” Later I'll
decide to write this down.