Slight Reality

print out your melancholy smile

in ALL CAPS and shout (quietly)

about how the world is

not your oyster because

someone’s stolen the

green fuzzy socks

hanging in the

laundry just

yesterday.

cry about the time you got M-O-N-O

from your girlfriend (boy-toy) or

maybe

about the time you made friends with

mari-juan-a in a pot-crack

and snortgiggled your way through

smoky tendencies parents school whatever

love.

so tried and true and sigh and been there

virgin queenly king, kingly queen virgin-y

never remembered when it happened

(it was a smoky room and your boyfriend alone and he went slow cause he was drunk but he loved you so much and really would die for you and all you could do was laugh it up at him as you talked dirty from the apex of your thighs and pushed-down stripy stockings)

but

hey, whatever.

mark it all up and draw all the X’s over the things

you’ve done—so accomplished in the survey of your life, living on

the e-d-g-e of the world

(but secretly you couldn’t care less you just want that feeling you couldn’t find from friends or boys or toys or love or lip gloss and green socks)

so fine the line you try to balance

hope you don’t step out of it and—oh, just

missed you as you walked the train to

New York City where you’ll

run again, away up a skyscraper and

into the ground.

10-26-04