written By
when my head whirs & clatters like a dusty fan.
I can’t close the browser window in my brain
long enough to enjoy a blank screen,
ease into an afternoon of rest.
I should be doing X, I think. She said Y, but why? I think.
The government is, the country is, the ignorance of men,
my own. I’m a failure & a god, I think,
ideas passing in contrails rather than lasting comets’ tails.
Talk to myself, although it’s not me to whom I speak,
but those I know: my head full of full conversations
we won’t have in dim bars or crowded halls
innocuously passing. Sometimes songs erupt inside:
dormant volcanos believed extinct. I don’t wish
to sing along, so listen as if to a stereo through the wall.
I can’t mute it, can’t make out words I once memorized
in ghost-gray off-key melodies like these.
