notapoem

untitled, James D. Kelly

and without fantasy, inklings of maybe-ness and
virtue spread thin enough to occasionally crack,
without that
______we might as well cut out our cardboard us-es
and paste name badges on them and throw them down stairs
and watch them smile still stupidly, while we, unDorian Grayed
get bored and walk on to perhaps think about how much cooler we'd have been
in high (after) school and afterwards too if we'd just taken to smoking earlier
in life, and there's nothing more ridiculous than a 25 year-old coughing up his last
can't-breathe-panic-attack while trying to rock hipster jeans and hipster hips and hipster face(s).

and without fantasy, the whole of nothing is totally possible, which is (obviously) as interesting as the whole of nothing totally sounds, which is to say: (and which i too often say so that now my sister when she rolls her eyes at my mom, copies me and mouths to me silently) shoot me now

and i gesture with a cocked-hand-pistol to my forehead, and recoil my head, and she smiles
and violence has never been so fun as lying here, at 5:55am waiting for the moon to fall asleep so i can steal her keys (that's a lie
i like to kiss her eye
it's satin and dry
as chalk, and she'll
only let me when she won't have to know
and after that, i'll go
(i promise,

that all the things i can't possibly know to be true (yet)
best be interesting,
because the things i do possibliest know to be true
have been.brought.given.and proven grave disappointingments.

____And while i don't wanna burn crosses into the irises of my eyes,
all atrocities are entirely possible
when a person's as this far away from themself,
or whoever they last were when they last lay on a bed
and didn't have to ask themself if it.that was home

and i don't dream,
and don't see steam streak straight up, sleight of story substitutes for starry sunrises still stay waiting to see.
____(which is to say: I am blind dear world,
____________[shakes his head]
____and there's no music for this tune,
____and if there's no music, there's no waltz.
____no walk ____no time ____no steps ____no dance

no more a point to join this long tangled line from then till now till later,
birth till oblivion,
(and all the oblivion in between)

*__*__*

i miss all you guys tonight.
i won't wake up in santa monica.
i won't have slept on the ground, with the shape of whatever i was reading imprinted on my belly cause i rolled over onto it at some point between midnight and 4am.
i won't not have breakfast.

and mostly...
i... [________]