Maybe I'll Never Write A Poem Again

I am so close to giving up I think

so many days of the week but of course

I am kidding I am messing around I am saying

it like the shrillness of a cooker’s whistle

to release some of the white hot foamy

pressure inside I am simply a girl though not

at all one I am simply a man toiling each day

at home and at work and in the strange dimensions

of my little mind I keep taking the world and 

trying to turn it trying to learn it trying to make

any sense at all. This shattered universe.

It always was so. Since time first sputtered

into being and began to bubble the hot rocks.

Since cells erupted into aliveness, positively

crackling, baby-green and waddling, all new

until eaten, until squashed, until rotting, until

peacefully passed to make way for the new.

I am only thirty but it feels too long. 

Though I’ve done hardly any of all that

I am here to do. It’s not that the world isn’t still

full of wonder and mystery, it’s that the pain

is endlessly mysterious too, revealing deeper

darkness the longer you look. It’s like atoms

that turned out to have so many parts when we 

thought they were the smallest parts of all.

All the parts have parts which have parts which

have parts. No staircase ends where it should.

The news is always worse than you could imagine.

So are your nightmares, which are simply only

showing you the showreel of your demons.

Your demons are not only yours though they

sure feel like it. Maybe this punishment fits.

In the kitchen when I am hopeless and aching

I drop a whole box of soup on a counter full of 

items. I want to die. My sister helps. We mop

and gather and wipe and scrub. I live and I live.