if every morning I awake with a hurt
at my gut exploding through my conscious space
that feels like a dirty pick-axe at work
attacking me heart and main in the place
where I’m supposed to be alone and safe,
perhaps you will forgive me if I chafe–

if whenever I try to journey down
inside my body’s mind I’m struck and thrown
out yelping, once again lost and not found,
perhaps you will forgive me for what you’ve sown
when you tell me such things can’t be
’cause someone wrote an article through which you see
my every moment this decade-and-some clearer than me

When people require you to lie
to them about what fills your life
and the conclusions you therefrom draw
you find yourself pretending to know them
and you wonder how different is this from normal
since no one wants to hear everyone’s everything
and you wonder why it so annoys you
since it’s not as if you wish to discuss
what cuts apart and compresses you like an apartment building’s compacting machine

When people require you to silence
what you don’t anyway wish to say
why should that get in the way
of amity
but maybe
the game
is elsewhere
the signs hold that this you cannot escape
while only your wife has time energy and incentive to help
The system has a flaw:
you wife’s not the time energy nor incentive to exist
and anyway you anyway have to do the project anyway
because
the real problem is not your aching gut
but
all these animated boulders
that walk like men and whose shoulders
ache and shake with the weight
of the world, which it is their Fate
to gobble without tasting
certain that they’ve earned
what they’re so busy wasting
never having learned
to note their elbows on the table
heavy, made of stones and cables
that tilt it all towards their bellies
which are rock outside but inside jelly
and everywhere
the symphony of innocence
is dying and drying in the sun
like jellyfish on the beach when we were very young
some times are better
some times are worse
better systems let kinder moments shine
worse systems drown kindness with that old line
about how the real world’s made for real men
and only losers worry about how you feel when
everything’s been turned to fortress and war
and no one recalls what that was all for