Steak Or Chicken

there must be days when george clinton
thinks about giving up the stars
for a steady job in furniture repair
and prince thinks about saying fuck it
i’m going into retail
bruce has to desire a corner barbershop
and mick must occasionally think about financial analysis
as a late career choice

just as
right now
i wanna be a rock star like they are
with a name that projects a complete cosmology
the minute it’s uttered

hearing my name
ought to change the inner monologue
of anyone who hears it

that’d be sweet

instead i’m in the store
looking at frozen fajitas
and i could be just anyone

it’s gotten so bad 
if someone calls my name
i don’t turn around because
they couldn’t possibly
be talking to me

and i am so inured
to being a nobody
that even my own name
doesn’t evoke anything except annoyance
that i’ve been disturbed before i can choose

steak or chicken

most days i don’t feel this way
i just go through motions
i’ve been through before
and i’m ok if not happy
the world around me
isn’t mine
i just live here
and i mean so little to it
that when i stop living here
someone else will be just fine
with my name

but right now
i wanna be a rock star
and i want my name to make the choice
of steak or chicken
for me
with a sense of inevitability
as they magically appear in my cart
they are exactly what i want
they are therefore exactly what everyone wants
and if i change my mind later
so shall change the fajitas
and so shall change everyone else’s mind and taste

so while bowie dreams of truck driving
and jay-z longs for an assembly line
i shall think of steak of chicken
and say
why not both
and why do we not call them
tony fajitas
regardless of what they are made from

why do we not cook them to a sound track of me

why does nobody
seem to have a clue
as to whether or not
i’m in the room