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Living Out Loud |
I.
I’m thinking about writing a note to the chick
downstairs, you hear me? ‘Cause
she dumps her
cat food cans on the grass
and they sit there
stinking up the place, you know?
And there’s flies that convene
their borrowed lives onto each small
morsel of dry meow mix bright orange
and full of moist, blooming possibility,
a cornucopia of malignant deep flesh,
and every day I walk by it and it’s gross.
Once I took a bag down and picked up
the cans myself, and there were
maggots in one can, I swear,
but I’m lyin’ when I say that, you know,
‘cause I’m thinkin’ hey, the more disgusting
my story is, the more focused you’ll be—
I mean, when you hear opened trash bags
and fishing poles stretchin’ back
and droppin’ into drowning with a plop
my favorite word emerges
II.
I took so many things as a child,
I took so many things with me
and carried them in my head and heart,
like a duffel bag full of snow and lost voices
singing through stars, the silent melody sprawling
across the night like wisps of billowy smoke
running from a sparked fire, the fire of mind
that drives us, pushes us, carries us heavy in its warm
and comfortable hands.
III.
What do we know of this world, see, without
a little help from our friends, you hear
what I’m saying? I mean to tell you,
it’s a miracle I even wipe my ass
without help. I even wipe away
the days I’d like to forget—all those times
I sat on the roof of that apartment
on 16th avenue begging God
or whoever for a way to make the world
understand, we cannot all of us be the hero
in our own stories, we cannot all of us
be the matrix world of plugging in to slippery
tubes of android guts and wait for the white
light to visit us in our darkest
flowers on the table for the dinner
party. I want to be the one who throws
the dinner party. I want to be the one
who is well loved, I want to no longer
feel the need to hide behind the mask
copyright 2005
Kirsten
Ogden |
