The key it seems is not to write

as it seems you should, or describe

your world, or even your perception

perverted by the lenses

laying over your mind, sealing eyes

shut striking deaf, dumb as never is

your problem on the page,

but the words are choking

raspberry sorbet, too sweet

to utter in the day, or nighttime

in sickening rhymes, dry heaving

barrels of iron over the wall

like strongman contests, Austrian

freak muscles giving their lives

meaning for eighteen minutes, on ESPN

in the morning, when I was ten

filling with dread, and what in hell

was it all for anyway, who cares?

 

I used to hate school, but none would

ever guess, the secret in my smiles,

I was a god boy, smart like a whip

sharp cracking, my teeth shone

brown cavitied, for brushing was a bore

I did not care, about painful procedures

or all the lost hours, taking the bus

to the orthodontist on Tuesday

after school, polishing Krispy Kremes

in a dumpster with my homework

pencils, stuck in imaginations throat

twisting with glee, wrenching till

I didn’t even notice it, my own dying

death of spirit, thinking it was me

wanting to supplicate, crying

because I didn’t care enough,

but I was lucky, growing strong

flexible and artistic, I know now

I should never have gone back

to college after the accident.

 

Social psychology is bullshit

like all art classes, english too

unless it’s called “appreciation,”

because that’s all it teaches

you to do, loving what none can

create cause it’s been done,

so get a mentor and you’ll see

it’s all like jazz, sounding the same

every time unless you’re alive

inside, with a library pulse

it will soak in, but I was even

worse, a philosophy major

staring into the void, asking

what it all means though bones

know the secret, the number

zero, calculating the secret

in the stars, go to sleep.