9.25.17

I move forward like a man whose
bones weigh tenfold his soul.
Not twenty-seven grams
but the gross weight,
misery-dampened and made
heavier in the equation of its
own mass. I have a cave for a
chest. A brain like sunscorched
meadows. And don’t start
with the heart. The snaring
beast, the blameless villain, the volcano,
the earthquake, the quivering magnitude
that rapes quantification. I have lived
enough to know that those who say
it will get better have not lived long enough,
or are empty empty empty like the purse
of a pickpocket’s wife.

Written at 11:05 at night, in my office, in Agoura Hills CA.