Tag: words

beat the clock

I was trying to save time. I ate
the canned soup. I bought my panic in bulk.
I outran the moon, she couldn’t keep up.
I doubled my body. We worked as a pair.
We velcro’d our sneakers. We cut our own hair.

While frothing the solvent of business and pleasure,
I got pulled over for texting and driving,
pausing the mindfulness podcast on 2x speed.

“Sir,
    you need
        to slow down

            Now.”

I’m trying to make time. I’m
      s  t  r  e  t  c  h  i  n  g
a minute
      like a ham hock in greens.
I’m walking.
    I’m talking.
I’m reading out loud. Stepping
      out of the office
        and into the river (there is
only one). Steeping
mint that I swiped
    from the Garden of Eden.
Folding the batter
    of motion
      and stillness.

      It’s three minutes
    to midnight:
do you know where your breath is right

            Now?

How many heartbeats escape your attention?
    The space in between them:
      does that count as

            Death?

I made some time,
for you.
Here,
take it.
Open the box
    that contains a box
      that contains a box
        that contains a box
          that contains
your candle,
lit at both ends.

      Blow it out.

        Breathe it in.

          Now,
            cough.

God gets bored

Eternal life is such a curse.
How many trillions of times
and billions of ways
over multiple millennia
will I have to answer the same whiny fuckin’ prayer:
“Why?”

I should have killed that Job in his crib.
“Why do we age, get sick, and die?”
Because otherwise the worms would starve and y’all’d run out of dirt.
It’s a whole system.
“Why did you let us invent napalm?”
Because my portfolio was underperforming and I overindexed on Dow Chemical.
Even God’s gotta eat.
“Why can’t we all just get along?”
Because y’all keep asking obnoxious questions like, “Is a hot dog a sandwich?”
Because to turn your sorrow into tears
and your tears into rage
and your rage into righteousness
is a daisy chain of miracles.
And because some of y’all are a pack of lies.

Fuck it.
Maybe I’ll spin some tectonic plates, rearrange the continents.
No, they’d just do a colonialism again.
Maybe I’ll send my dirtbag son back down there to shoot dice and flip some tables.
No, they’d probably beat his ass to death with hammers this time.
Maybe I’ll fuck around with the gene pool, get some new species goin’.
No, whenever I try that I just end up with more goddamn crabs.
Maybe I’ll… maybe I’ll…
Maybe I’ll kill Dolly Parton!

“Hard Candy Christmas” is the kid’s favorite birthday song, though,
and out of all the life forms I’ve created, these dumbasses were the first to figure out a croissant.
The fact that they gave Toni Morrison her flowers is a credit to the species,
and I have seen incremental progress
since I stopped speaking to them through burning bushes,
talking donkeys, and burn toast.
I should stick to what I’m good at:
Mississippi thunderstorms,
the opiate relief of canceled plans,
the sun shining down on a newly-divorced woman,
big luscious butts.

I could be nicer to them.
I forget why I made it so hot in the summer and cold in the winter,
and that they rarely figure out what to do with their bodies
until they’re wracked with pain and near decrepitude.
That unless they hold hands, feed each other,
ignore anyone claiming to speak in my name,
live with delusional bravery and spit in my eye,
they’ll never make it.

Maybe those fallen angels have a point.