poem 239 of a poem a day for 2012

the valence of that Summer  

trees tame my soul

seek my body again

and again to seed cycle

to gutter sunshine

to find what’s mine

with my little cardboard sign

I made so that each car passing

knows I want more of

what they have inside

they almost always look away

I must frighten them

or maybe that’s what I tell myself

when they don’t look back

when words don’t come home

or they have become

the easy part

of denying myself humanity

because I don’t feel  

because I don’t want to feel

because I am too numb

to live anywhere

but inside a fantasy

or a temporary pleasure

as I listen to the whir of rubber

meeting the road

I remember that there is

a certainty of sound

LSD painted me

into this sermon once

brushed it inside me

the first time I took it

drove by feel like a fool

pulled over in a cemetery

watched the pinwheels

where leaves used to be

ran my fingers over

the rusted fence and

crossed the street and walked

silently

slowly

uphill

as if I might have been

doing this bit of lonely forever and

had just lost sight of myself

when I snuck into

the downstairs window

in a house of a girl

I had once loved and laughed with

she said I was acting funny

and then we fucked for hours

grinding decades of

American dreamt desire

into each minute

clock charming the dark velvet

under the pine boughs

to come wrap us before Dawn did

I left around 4 am

still tasting the divinity

that existed just beneath

the skin of things

I just didn’t know

if I was real

or part of someone

else’s imagination

EJR ©