You don’t know what it’s like
to add a word or a line
to a description of a feeling
or a sunset or a dirty coat.

You don’t know what it’s like
to love someone or hate them
or be disinterested in them
entirely as if they were simply
goose food left on the ground
for someone to pick up.

To simply not care except
as distraction from this —
this, ugh, world. This fantasy
loved and believed in by millions.
This too solid ball of rock and
marketing. I went to a store yesterday
and all I could do in the aisles
was moan amid the ersatz choices
of this flavor and that narrowing
of choices — enough to make you
crazy or perhaps dull you enough
to choose one over another; settle
down now, it’s not that big
a deal —

but it is. It is, and the more I run
from choice the more it comes
for me. Like a toad or a turtle
it serenely moves over me, a fat choice
indeed except not really,
it is a fantasy of narrowing

which is why I choose neither
as my own. I bust loose
with delicate words or smash easy
with a whisper and sit back satsified
that even if it is not an ultimate truth
or even a temporary one it is one
and it will last somehow, longer
thatn love or hate, longer
than the dirty coat, certainly
longer than the sunset —

believe me,
you don’t know what it’s like in here.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T