it’s one of those days when you push against the grey strain
of meaninglessness/face-to-face with yourself
in a way you try to avoid by keeping yourself too busy
to invest in yourself as anything more than a king
of the left hemisphere/a prince of capitalism and
calvinism/the work ethic you’ve convinced yourself
is worth more than the sum of your parts
that ache in the name of slavery to self-concept/
you are the fucking man the way you muscle
your way out of moods and into money and into
mania and into exhaustion so deep you know
you’ll sleep at least enough to do it all again
in the name of anger and vengeance and love and
fucking/oh, you’ve got this blue mood right now
and all you’ve got are thoughts of death and
dying children and torture victims and trapped
animals coming at you like a sonic boom and
you can’t do anything but hate that you feel this way/
remember goodness/remember toes in the sand/her toes
in the sand/her hair in the sun/her smile the night
you knew you could love her/the full moon splashed
onto the black night/oh, it was so bright and
as big as the past you carry around with you like
it’s your identity/you dream of a blood moon
and all you can do is scream yourself awake/
not even sleep saves you and you wonder what saves you
what saves anyone from the agony of relentless thoughts
and cells that burst and burn like stars that linger ghostly
dead and alive in the light-years of your soul/insight hits
too soon or too late and your self-knowledge serves
anyone but you/ah, but remember goodness/remember ecstasy/remember sublimity/remember quantum simultaneity and how beautiful it is that so many things not having to do with you all happen or don’t happen at the same time for their own reasons or for each other and that every day someone new is born as another star dies and nothing connects them but a sense of yearning in the primal vastness of spacetime/so you yearn caught in between yourself and the idea of yourself/it’s all fleeting greens and blues out there and blue and green inside of you/so remember goodness/remember sliding your hands in sand/remember warm waters/ the embrace of a wave you couldn’t fight/no mind no muscle no mania to save you/ah, those warm waters/taking everything you are and giving it back in the consecration of a new you//