I’m not sure how I used to stop the world,
but there were times when everything
slowed and each of my moves was perfect,
no wasted effort,
arms synched perfectly swinging
as I turned toward the yard
away from the screen door closing behind me,
and then I discovered that my vision
had sharpened at the edges
and deepened at the center of the field of view
so that a jonquil stood out dead still from the lawn, its petals
honed against the green behind it so it seemed
cut from life and yellow as piss, as sunshine,
and no stigma came with either definition of that glow —
there was a time I could stop the world
but I didn’t understand how useful that could be,
so I have forgotten how.
I have learned how to think instead.

Instead of making the world stop
I stop myself
and sit ass-heavy on the couch thinking of
good times. When I leave the house
I close the door behind me carefully now, never
letting it slam, afraid of the consequences;
I don’t know how good times
happen anymore and I don’t want to scare them off.

I step out of the door and
I don’t see much color
out there, so I tend to stay in more,
getting excited now only over monochromes:
marathon television viewing, the relief
when the cigarette is finished and I can breathe
something that’s not grey fire in my throat, the relief of
the fire that lights the next one, the ice cubes in
the Canadian Club, the longing for a good night’s sleep
because the only time the world stops now
is when I am not thinking of it, when I cannot see it at all,
when the dark eats my dreams and I live quietly for a moment,

living dead for an hour or two at a time,
at last not regretting the poisonous hope
that one day I’ll remember how to stop the world,
recall how I used to see
the razor beauty of things
that grow without the curse of thoughts.