I’m full.
Often it’s almost unbearable.
My head might be packed with ideas or snot.
The veins through my scalp and temples pulse with too much blood.
My throat is clogged with a fat tongue flapping too enthusiastically.
Hot air fills my chest and pushes my diaphragm.
An array of foods with too many calories fight their way through my stomach and intestines.
I’m packed like a suitcase that’s never coming back.
I’m abundantly aware.
I saw what you saw.
I found the loose change as we walked through the mall.
Yet finding the dollars to perpetuate my state proves elusive.
Their state lives on; mine remains a memory.
It’s a memory of what I wanted and how it has had to change.
It’s a memory that dims each year.
It’s a memory constantly under attack from the beat in my head meat.
It plays me like I used to play you. It knows me better than I know myself for it knows nothing.
“I coulda been something!”
I could have been a king.
I could have been awash in luxury.
I could have been a thing.
Yes a thing to be passed around and praised and drank from.
A bottomless well of hope and inspiration.
A thing you could caption and memeify and transmit over the air where I could fly and disappear.
I could have been an abstraction always up for interpretation while the jury’s on strike.
I could have tried.
I could have tried harder.
I lost my stories.
I’m back on the first floor digging the grave I call my basement.
It’s hard work shoveling so much shit up and over.
I’m dirty, but it feels good to belong.
I’m tired, so I appreciate the darkness.
My swollen muscles can relax when I no longer think I’ll be able to climb out.
I lost my heroes.
I sent them on a trip and they came back distorted.
They got the shakes and don’t walk so straight.
They get loud in all the wrong places.
They don’t smile in fact, they barely have faces.
No more revolution.
No justice or league to keep the peace.
No tomorrow.
Just no.
