Of course
you can give your heart to
someone else, but it’s a heavy
thing—
if you cannot bear it yourself,
how could you justify forcing it upon another?
How could you force a person
to carry your cross
in addition to his own?
It’s better, I think
to instead grow
stronger.
Learn to love yourself.
I lost my job again
stopped showing,
didn’t call again
but that’s okay.
I slept til four PM
each day
for the last week again
but that’s okay.
I got piss-drunk again
can’t remember, but heard I
insulted all my friends
again
but that’s okay.
Today’s a new day.
Lots of places seeking help
and I didn’t like my job anyway
and those nights awake
were worth the wait—
I’d thoughts I may not think again
and my friends all know the way I am
and in spite of that, they’ll stay.
So life’s okay on this overcast day
and I’ll keep living on, some way.
I didn’t think of you when my eyes went wide
when the buzz began and I was brushing
residue from my stubbly, sleep-deprived face
when the sky was brilliant blue
and the summer air felt fresh on my bare knees
but I thought of you later.
I thought of you as I crashed hard
when the liquor which came for free
returned to take its toll on my weary mind
because you aren’t the rush, the buzz, the high.
You are the dread crash and comedown
when the drugs have run out, much like you did
and you come to fill that vacant void
from somewhere across the wastes of time and space
but you’re a ghost, and these thoughts occupy me
like water poured into an endless pit
left me wanting always more
and never receiving.
I thought of you then.
I’ll concede that this poem is likely
little more than an
exercise in arrogance
but I’d call myself
a fairly smart man
and I’ve been so told for
a long time
and I’ve been told, too
about the great things I’d do and be
because I’m a smart man.
Well, I haven’t seen much of that
in spite of their best standardized predictors
and I guess I must’ve been
a bit of a
disappointment
when I ended up being a little
less smart
than they’d insisted I was
but I have myself discovered one aspect
of intelligence
that nobody ever told me about
so don’t let anyone tell you
that these things come
without cost.
I’ll admit, I might be wrong
but I doubt it—
see, I’ve found that there’s just one guarantee
with intelligence
and that guarantee is that
it’s pretty
fucking
lonely.
Sometimes
I feel I can relate
to the ocean and its ways;
after all, they say
we know more about what
goes on
on the moon
that we do about
the workings of the deepest
depths
of the ocean.
I guess what I’m trying to say is
that I don’t really know what I’m trying
to say, and that all I really know
is that I don’t really know
all that much
at all
but all that’s okay,
I guess.
It has been long said
that time heals all things
but in my experience,
that isn’t entirely true—
you see, time does heal most things
but some wounds are stubborn
and it takes a while, but even time
sometimes loses patience
and when that happens, it’s over
for what time cannot heal,
it kills.
Of course, the grass is no greener
in the places I’m not
but hopefully, maybe
if I’m lucky
it’ll be a little bit
less brown.
I have an electric can
opener
and it opens cans quickly,
saving some seconds
per can opened—
seconds I would’ve lost
had I opened the can
with a manual
can opener.
I travel by airliner
whenever possible because
five hundred and twenty-five
miles per hour is faster
than walking
but when I can’t fly,
I take interstate
highways because
they’re more efficient than
small roads,
so I save time.
I wait for convenient
spots in
parking lots
to become available,
so I spend less time
walking to and from my car,
and I have more time to spend
waiting for convenient parking
spots to open up.
I wait for the elevator
instead of taking the stairs
so that way I can spend
the time I would’ve
spent taking the stairs
waiting for the elevator
so that way I can save the time
I would’ve spent taking
the stairs.
I don’t know what
I’ll do with all of
this time I’m saving,
but hopefully I won’t have
to spend too much time
doing it.
I wish I had held myself together.
I wish I’d done better,
done more, been better.
Wished I could try,
now wishing I had.
Sure wish I’d spent less time
trying to wish away the bad.
I might’ve been something
had I been anything
to begin with,
but if there’s a God
his concerns are more
important
than I am.
He didn’t stack chips
upon any
of my plans
and I don’t blame him—
he’d have lost them.
I wouldn’t have placed
that bet
either.
God doesn’t, can’t help those
who help themselves
to repeated glasses of
bourbon and gin
and out from open windows, shout
slurred shouts, swearing skyward, said
“Well, goddamn! I never once wished for this!”
D. B. DEVILLIERS 