Scrolling is easy
You give into gravity
You need no compass
You endlessly go down
First goes your mind
It’s stuffed with gold and garbage until it bursts
Then your bleeding organs await maintenance
Then your gray heart and your dried up soul
Get caught in a wheel that is being continuously turned by you
But you have no control over it
And every voice that matters gets put on low low volume
So that you won’t be distracted from the deafening incoherent loop of nothingness and soul numbing diarrhea because your brain craves a reset and you run it low power til it dies
And you have so many tools and no supplies
And an inability to take truth from the lies
And when your cup overflows with poison it can seep into places of importance
And you use your brain as the sponge that guards your heart
That sits down at your stomach
And it drips and it soaks
And it leaks and it never stops and the noise
it never leaves
Maximum time for minimal attention
Nothing of note is worth a mention
It comes only by reflex and invitation
(Marie from the Nutcracker grows ever older seeking her childhood dream...)
In her flat, thirty-something Marie
Is scrolling with mounting ennui;
Mr Right still eludes her -
She swipes left on Tinder,
Finding less and less fish in the sea
My own insecurities ruin everything I can have
I scroll and scroll until I have no energy left
I feel like I’m falling into a void of self-destruction
Everything I do comes to bite me in the end
Any connections are broken when I move to another state
I am in a constant state of self-loathing
My inner child can’t be healed at this point
I grew up in a time of screens
And cellphone cults
Watching our life getting sucked away by disease and electricity
I wish I were a true poet
Incorporating meaning into every line
My symbolism saying
The words I couldn't
But, I’m just a kid who has bitten off more than she can chew
The church says that I was picked by God himself
My father says that I was blessed with many qualities
My pastor says that I am special and my innocence needs to be protected
But how do you know?
I have to come face-to-face with the selfish parts of my heart
I have to meet my sinful counterpart
But I keep scrolling until I fall to the song of sleep
Sirens sounded secretly securing source. Strait sacks swooshed scamps scaling sensitive sentries (simply spayed seals) surveying surrounding staked spy sotted sham semicircular slipshod shelter. Snappy, Snippy, Snoopy suited Skyhawks surprisingly swooped somnambulant senseless scriveners. Sargent Salemander slipped shiny shimmering shellacked Sheppards Shutterfly sidearms sized simulated small skyscraper slinky, soapy, spooky squarely summoned, sentenced, sacrificed see swarthy Samsonite satraps Section SpecialOps.
Sometime soon savior snuck stealthily stealing sinful schleppers. sundown syzygy saw serendipitous, surreptitious, surreptitious segue-way shuttled safely Scottish shoals. Stigmatization stayed steady. Supplication statements swatted. Sole survivor swiftly spun self shaming sesquipedalian soliloquy. Sea side serenade soon spewed solipsism saving Slim Shady.
Sayonara seminal surfer swirling scarily sans sinister serpentine silent space.
I’m looking at this picture of my daughter Ava
someone took three years ago as she was watching me
during the semifinals of our tennis club’s singles championship:
Standing there with her back to the camera,
her little fingers curled around the metal wiring of
a chain link fence, she’s trying to capture my attention
before I hit a kick-serve from the ad-side court;
Intently focused on the task at hand, I bounce the green ball
twice in front of me, toss it slightly behind my center of gravity
into swirling winds three feet above, coil like a spring,
and then, with every ounce of my being, explode upwards
while Ava stands there - still - her wide eyes searching an empty cage.
5/8/2017
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