Under the skull’s top and
buried in the wet jelly
is where I live in the reptile neighborhood.

I lie on a flat rock
and imagine the sun is piercing
all the way through to warm me enough

to strike back
at the pain and danger
all around me.

Then you say it’s the jelly
that’s making all the horror
real, and that I’m as much

the jelly as the reptile raging
within it. I am unsure — it feels
more and more that I am living

somewhere else, not in the body
or the brain. That I only inhabit them
as needed and my true home is elsewhere.

I am unsure if I have ever been the reptile
now that I consider it — it is possible
all I know about myself

is an overlay of myths upon mystery.
I only know I am scared tonight, my teeth
on edge, slightly bared, waiting to tear free.

These junky feet
suck. Neither big nor small,
invisibly broken since I was young
and now the damage is catching up —

I’ve been places with them, I admit,
some places I do not regret,
but now I can’t stay upright on them for long.
The long stumble of the past few years

led me here to a seat on a broken couch
and here my ass is going to stay.
I’m looking at my feet, good only now
for kicking — buckets, rocks, myself.

I’d cut them off — but then, why stop there,
and if I dulled the blade while cutting them off
I might be unable to get to the sharpener
and continue up the body. I suppose I could

bring all my knives out
and have them close so I didn’t have to waste
time sharpening this one? I’m glad I thought of it
before I started sawing away, before drowning

the carpet with blood and the air with screams.
Glad I can put these feet to a productive use
one last time. One last journey ahead of me:
a short one but one I should have taken sooner.

But it’s so nice here on the couch
that I might wait a bit longer. See if things
change. See if I change. See if the pain fades.
See if anything at all presents itself anytime soon.

The black cat lies on my chest
and demands attention. She doesn’t care
about civil war or climate change —

just wants what she wants,
what she always wants. I’m not certain
love is the right word for her part in this.

I’ll call it that for the moment.
For the moment it feels like the right word.
Love holds her to the simple path

of touch and feed and sleep
and while it won’t stop my world
from dissolving around us both,

it will do for the moment to keep me
from despair for the future
that I know is short (for me at least);

I have no illusions tonight —
just the cat, the comic films,
love’s promise of a full night’s sleep

erasing the day, the week,
the year, the era, and all the sick air
I’m so tired of breathing.

Admit to yourself
that at least some part of you
has at least now and then wanted to be
full-on mediocre —

that you longed for a living room
with matching recliners
and cheap Van Gogh prints
on beige walls,
an endless string of Sundays
of mild chicken dinners
and football, always football afterward.

If you can acknowledge this
you can then go on
to admit your utter fear
of the thrilling days
where you find yourself now,
this moment in history
that pushes you outward,
finds you attempting to burst
from your public skin into
some new and unfamiliar form —

it would have been so wonderful
to have been unremarkable,
to have been comfortable,
to have had the luxury of banality,
to have been able
to be part of the weak scenery,

but here you are.

I’m not looking for death,
just acknowledging it when I say
lately I’m striving
for great last words
to leave behind.

It would be so, so good
to push back
from the desk and say,
“At last.”

Every poem’s been
an attempted epitaph
or suicide note
that wasn’t good enough,
so I had to stay alive
to write a better one.

You’re going to moan,
“how morbid,” I know.
Call me goth or melancholy,
tell me I’m obsessed to the point of
mediocrity —
I have heard it so often
I take it to heart now and then

but I have no other way to be fully alive
than to look the inevitable
right in its deep dark maw
and try to stuff something down there
that it will choke on and
be unable to dissolve.

you’ve had
a long needed
full night’s sleep

upon rising
try not to lament
this daybreak as a literal
fracture in the good mood

all the fears of yesterday
remain of course but

instead for a few minutes anyway
enjoy the gentle crack
of the beginning of weekday
routines in your neighborhood

an egg must shatter
upon fulfilling
its purpose

Certain people
have stories
about nights
they couldn’t sleep
for the wind whistling
in the crabbed trees
outside their childhood
and how the sound
masked the steps
of the bad parent
coming up the stairs

They tell them
every chance they get
assuming
the rest of us
are condemned sailors
and this is our part to play
in their lives

One of them
is bending my ear
almost double right now
with the weight of
that long ago inflicted
still acute pain

and I’m chafing
at the telling because
I’ve got my own
long rehearsed story
queued up and ready to go

and there doesn’t seem to be
an opening for it here

We’ve all been there I know

Don’t you hate how
that weight
hanging from your neck
gets heavier with
their every word