Irrelevance

I shuffled in ash black coat to the market where I pulled off a banana and a beer
I was one penny short
Mother Gloria let it slide
“You’re not going anywhere”, she said until she brown paper bagged it
all men walk around with vices in brown paper bags
it’s the way my America works
play it safe
don’t expose too much of the tender belly that makes us human
all armor and false bravery, my America
but our cats know what’s going on
looking in dark cupboards and sleeping all day by the window dreaming
you want to know the meaning of life?
look out the window
I did
I saw a tree shaking on snowy sky
I saw the screen meshed, messing up the precise eye
my right socket has been aching all day
last night I was drinking San Francisco away
Southern Comfort in kids park abandoned to lawless night
sushi bar and beer
chinese karaoke and a bowl of peanuts
Vesuvius of some fame to mongrel geniuses came before
while one friend went to the peep show like a good Catholic habit
to liquor store for more of the same firewater we dosed on in the playground
and down to the bay between piers
swinging my feet over the edge
talking trash and wisdom
of love and young life
the tarwater below smooth with light lines of polished precious stone
called up a friend and lilted this way and that on breakup etiquette
around a week before today my true love chopped the head off our dying horse
the phone friend, a he, tells me
I need to mourn more for impending rebounds occur
I’ve mourned quick
I’m moving on
and I will never know what he needs as a man
I’ll murk and meander though this heartbroken season with my head high
I won’t deny the rest of my life the air it needs
I’m not going to dwell and commiserate with my ex’s mode of healing
which seems to involve a whole lot of denial, mankind’s strongest weapon
let me see the blood red flushing cheeks and puffy eyes
let me see the carnage and debris
I can’t stumble round in the dark tripping in circles year in and year out
the ex told me I didn’t seem to have a plan
well, one he couldn’t, for sure, understand
I want to shred the brown paper bags
and take on the justifications
take DOWN the justifications
gesticulation of the ways of nothing
as something
these, indeed, are troubling times, my America
poised to collapse in pious shock therapy
while women who don’t know any more than I are pushing buttons and steering
my America into a wasteland of the mind
young people will rise up from the ashes
radical
right-on
and irrelevant .
All of this is over in the blink of an eye.