Here Lies A Meaningless Poem.

when you find yourself deviously conspiring convoluted tales of

'prior obligations'

to lie to work, school, family, and friends,

so you can plot at some point this week to actually have an evening

ALONE

to go to the gym and take a bubble bath and read mary magdalene and hide out in the library and not feel bad about it at all,

because your actual obligations have usurped every square foot of your mental space till your day is literally a sentient schedule that occasionally erupts into flares of anxiety or impulsive behavior and you find yourself irreparably numb to keep it in check or wildly emotive to the point of dysphoria, and are constantly teetering upon the tragic balance in between euphoric exuberance and absolute bone-cold terror that is the Blank White Walls So Very Wide Awake and the paint isn't even real white it's some weird flourescent colour I've never even seen

and everyone tells me they spray-paint the grass and you know what I think that's true and Jesus if that isn't some so darkly grim analogy for whatever it is we think we're doing,

in this pretty little hole of astounding architecture and 6 million dollars that I paid for with my goddamn student loans and I walk through rich-red halls and haunting chandeliers that sparkle with the promise You Deserve To Be Here And You Know You Could Be Anything

You Can Be Anything

But dear God don't be Poor

Don't be too Old

Don't be too Black

Don't be too Drive Four Miles Away and see the crackhead at the bus stop with her tinfoil hat umbrella who every single day she is waiting by the street for a phone call from the Lord that never comes and if it doesn't come for her dear God why should it come for you

I envy the way they wear their Lily Pulitzer bags from Mom and Dad and ask exactly the right amount of questions to get by but not to care too much

I envy the way that education's just another Thing You Do when I have dreamt and thirsted for it like the last rays of the sun

I envy the way they smile at the strangers and don't worry about being followed home on your bicycle or slammed against your car by an angry man or cornered in a parking lot by snaggle-toothed men with hungry eyes who say they'll take you home

I envy the way they leave their wallet on the counter and just walk away because they know no one will take it because we're rich and white and fine and stealing's for the poor

I envy the way it's liberating to immerse yourself with drinking and breathe in the crisp awakeness of new people like some bold new drug you've never known

A drug I've had enough of

Because most people so very sadly are just conglomerations of Things assimilated to appear a cohesive whole somehow original, a sick grotesque mosaic that is utterly lacking in self

But I envylove you with the light behind your eyes and smoldr'ing fire in your soul that the world has not yet extinguished in me too, my friend, me too

And while I've seen more terrifying Somethings such that I could never know or trust a naked man oh still I yearn to see him like it's not a funny joke and I crave the Somehows like they crave all the Somewhats

the Somehows tantalize me into lull lull lull sweet lullaby erotic entrancement of Pull, Pull, Pull soveryawake that I almost fall in its arms asleep

I yearn for you, myself

I am cheating on the world with you

As I find you reawakened

And breathlessly catch-self unapologetically in awe

Of the raw unquenchable newness so very old

Brimming forth from you

I know not from where you came or at all wherever you are going

But I follow you, my sweet self

Because I know you'll take me there