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.