Disordered Thoughts, Naturally

the ceiling fan overhead
shakes back and forth,
beginning, a train of
disordered thoughts,
this poem,
the caboose.

reimagined, the fan,
it becomes
a yeshiva boy
fervent praying,
his version of ***** dancing,
shaking rocking swaying fervor,
shuckling.

for what does he pray?

for advance forgiveness
for he is simulcast
requesting getting lucky,
to be knowing
the miracle of being
with a woman or a man,
thus, getting closer to
God,
naturally.

He will be excised
for being human,  
he will be excused  
for by definition,
by succeeding and by failing,
in his desire
to be close to divine,
he best divines the
tragicomic nature of the
human condition:
the joy of sin,
the sin,
of a life without joy,
naturally.

Clean sheets nightly,
turn down service,
chocolates on my pillow,
good night kisses
on each eye,
even spooning,
are not among the
six hundred and thirteen
positive commandments
in the Bible.
why not?

why,
cannot this be
constitutionally amended,

by voice vote
of anyone who cares
to shout out a yay,
or blink approvingly,
or signs by fingers
sugar snapping and
hands, toe tapping?

all methodologies
intended to indicate the satisfaction
that comes from changes
made not in,
but also
from
the human tissue of heartbeats,
naturally

Somewhere
a solitary fish
swims upstream,
against the current,
defying odds...

weird,
the ways things should be,
never thinking,
wondering out loud,
why compulsion impels
so many living things
to do the opposite of logical,
natural in so many ways.

never asking,
why a fish must struggle to spawn,
upwards and onwards
to die so it, and the
the man, the bear,
he will feed,
the progeny released
can live?

for if this is the
natural order,
then is not nature,
too oft logically discordant,
and thus
disorder is the
state of being,
naturally.

Something makes me
awestruck and wondrous silent,
ever time I touch a
young child's skin,
joy instantaneous takes hold,
true shock and awe
succumbs me.

cannot be just miracle mine,
the sensation of life so sweet,
wondrous on my fingertips,
that repeated stroking is
******* addictive,
naturally.

what would be the harm,
if this soft shell of derma-finery
were a permanent condition,
a constant reminder,  
we all share,
born and bred,
a premier clean slate of
natural innocence unblemished,
perma-frosted prima face facile,
naturally.

this was how
we were created,
why perforce,
was it deemed orderly,
'better'
to evolve into something
grizzled, cracked and roughened slowly,
naturally.

Strange thoughts
are my normal fare,
if you only knew
the laugh of it,  
you might recommend,
keeping them closer still,
and me
far away from you!

maybe there is a God above,
but if there is,
he be
responsible for the sleepless nights
where stanzas of
whimsy, pain and joy are soldered,
ironed into a coalescing coalition,
denoted as a
restless and disordered mind,
but of course!
not my fault,
naturally!

next time we meet,
see smiles irregularly sweet,
turning,
reversing to and fro,
for such is the
inchoate state
of what transverses
on my cellular network
these rambunctious dark hours,
naturally.

fresh orange clementines on a
white kitchen counter,
incongruous with a windowed view of
white winter's barometric pressures.

eye illusions,
making no sense,
like me drinking
ice coffee in NYC on
New Year's Eve.

New Years Eve too,
a nonsensical notation,
an illusory line,
imposed upon us by
calendar salesmen and astronomers,
for profit and seals of good timekeeping.

There is no solstice,
no verifiable, demonstrable,
celestial line of demarcation,
just a box on a calendar
of man-made paper,
man-dating
fresh thinking,
de-man-ding,
we gaily clad ourselves
in suits of optimistic armor,
heavy with good cheer,
so much so,
we list to one side
under a burden
of greater expectations

the starting line is
worldwide, continental.

a ball drops
to signal the beginning of a new
human race to
another artifice in future time.

with inebriated staggering starts
over staggered time zones,
thus creating a continuous,
rolling wave-eve of resolutions.

I say to myself,
what the heck,
why not!

if the whole world
must share
but one
global illusion,

this one,
fresh starts of fresh hearts,
is not a bad one,
maybe, perhaps,
as good as it gets?

I wish I had known you when you were alive,
when your heart was still beating and your skin was flush.
I wish I had known your will to survive when your thoughts weren't in such a rush.

I wish I had met you back when we were young,
before all these trials of life...
I wish we had cried all our tears to the ground and evicted the whole of our strife.

Never, no never, did I ever think
that I'd bury a friend like you.
But clever, so clever, those poisonous barbs that split both our hearts in two.

I loved you so deeply, though you were so cold
I was fooled by the warmth of a lie.
Naked and blinded I gave you the knife
and lifted my eyes to the sky.

Now I've stumbled through darkness and stretched for a hand, wishing sometimes I could die.
While loneliness dances across my heart, suppressing my urge to cry.

I wish I had known you when you were alive,
when your heart was still beating and your skin was flush.
I wish I had known that I'd lose such a friend in a sparring that I couldn't crush.

I wish I had met you back when we were young,
before all these trials of life...
I wish we had cried all our tears to the ground and evicted the whole of our strife.

Never. No never.
Did I ever think that I'd bury a friend like you.....

But clever, so clever, those poisonous barbs that split both our hearts in two.

I'm sitting in the library before school,
talking and laughing like any other day
when you reach over and pick up
a book on overcoming anorexia.

You hold the nonthreatening orange-and-purple cover in your hands
that I once thought were gentle
and scoff, saying, "People with anorexia are so stupid."

Our friends sitting around us agree
and laugh and joke about it
while I sit in mute horror and suppressed panic
and dig my fingernails into my skin
until someone asks
why I'm not laughing.

Why am I not laughing?

I am not laughing at the disease
that consumed my life for nearly a year,
that ripped and clawed its way into my mind
and through my veins
like an addiction,
like a freight train gone off the tracks,
out of control and spinning
and uprooting everything crucial and meaningful
and burying it it flames,
turning it to ashes.

I am not laughing
at the nights I spent crying
and hating myself
while I felt the lining of my stomach
try to consume itself
in a poor replacement of the
sustenance I was denying myself
while I again dug my fingernails into my skin,
pins holding a dead butterfly
to its morbid display.

I am not laughing
at the thoughts that constantly filled my head
of death and disaster and pain
of wishing them upon myself
of making them happen
of letting myself shrink
and shed the space
that I believed I did not deserve to occupy.

I am not laughing at the thoughts
that after two years still plague me-
is my stomach sticking out?
do you really deserve breakfast?
your thighs are too big
your hips too wide
I count fewer ribs each day
you are fat
fatfatfatfatfatfat
worthless fat useless fat pathetic fat
you deserve to die
fat.

I am not laughing
at my choice
of slow suicide
that I made the
agonizing choice
to save myself from.

I am not laughing
at the book that I myself read
at every torturous bite of food I took
at every painful step of recovery.

I am not laughing
because I will not take away
every moment I felt strong for not relapsing,
every prayer I pled
every tear I shed,
every time I decided that I did not want to die
anymore.

I am not laughing.
I am leaving.

Hello I'm new it's nice to see you.

I've been feeling a little blue so I've come to meet you.

I hear you are all so happy how is this so?

Where I come from the sadness fills you up and continues to grow leaving much room for lust and distrust.

The more I come the less I go.

I think it's time I must be heading back home.

But before I go listen so, happiness is a treasure and one you should respect with grace forever.  

Some take it for granted but once you go without you'll know just what I'm talking about.

So sing with cheer and love with meaning and be sincere for all has meaning.