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.