i cross and uncross my legs and the look of
disdain goes from sour to worse and still worse till
it feels as though i'm going to implode through my nose

and we're on this journey together, or so i tell
myself still that i get to sleep at night,
so that doesn't keep me up all night,
this feeling that a fear i can't escape is
something that will with me always...

so i summon up worse fates to endure, worse lives
to live...but in truth this is the hell i've always
tried to escape--

and anger ideas great ensuring self-worth when
self-worth is nowhere around, but just look what
it does to sleep, look how i'm up like a shot
when i need to be dead took the world that i might
rise when it's really my and pretend once again
i'm alive,

look at how there is no journey but this one
and
how there is no "we," just me--

come on now, you didn't think you were going to get away with not dreaming about the undead after all this business at work, did you?--that was the problem with you thinkers: all you ever did was thinking!--the truth is that you thought far too much--you should've been out there living, trying to get laid, trying to knock the hell out of the world with your next verse...but instead, there you were lying awake for hours, literally hours, and all because of what?: some witch at work who wants to run everyone's world by being what she can't help but being?--you'd even said it to yourself driving home, that she wasn't a bad person, she was just a petty and sick ******* who had to make everyone's life that much lousier, that was her "power," if you wanted to call such a thing power...but it's not like she was your boss, she'd just said something that had injured you because you'd allowed it to injure you, because it had been true a long time ago that you'd let it appear that you'd "****** up" when in truth you'd saved yourself a ton of misery by doing so--the thing itself was so small, though, that only someone who was picayune was ever going to know that you'd still felt ****** up over it...it just so happens that she had remembered and that she was just petty and picky enough to throw it back in your face at the exact right time...but how often had you said to yourself that you really needed to combat such ******* behavior by thinking as clearly as you could in the moment, by just knowing that you hadn't done anything wrong, that in most cases, you were probably smarter and more capable than whoever it was who was accusing of something ridiculous or trying to make you look bad for whatever reason...and how often had you failed in taking this information to heart, facts that would make anyone else feel good about themselves, but with you, it was just another reason why you made yourself miserable: you just couldn't translate all of these individual positive things about you into a more cohesive and positive whole--to you, you were always doing spin control to get yourself back from the edge you felt they were all pushing you closer and closer toward--and when you got there, and if you went over, what then?--only what had happened last night, which is what was happening all the time...you lie awake sleepless and fuming over feeling like you were made to look bad even understanding in the moment that you would never remember this ***** or anything she said, that you'd even forget her name in time because people like that were nothing to you, they meant nothing to you--but how long would that take?: five years, ten years?--you wanted to forget all about her now, but it's not like you weren't ever going to see her again, which is why you were getting all stressed out, because in a few hours, you'd have to drag your sorry carcass out of bed and go back there and do it all over again--so you were going to have to figure out a way to evolve through this experience, you were going to have to sort all this out in your head and get right with it somehow because in fewer than twenty-four hours, you'd be right back here, crawling into bed and asking yourself if it was going to be "another one of those nights" where you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when you returned, found it impossible to get your mind off of anything but what had happened involving this woman, this creature, this **** who was a bought on all womankind--yes, she was really that bad, maybe not a bad person per se, but bad enough to lump her in with all the other ***** you'd ever run across in your travails in this world, these bleeding animals who just wanted the world to serve them in one form or fashion and who didn't care who had to lie facedown in the mud to do it--in such a scenario, that doomed fool lying facedown was you...but you didn't want that to be you, and at the very least you'd wanted to have your slice of revenge by having your slice of life have nothing to do with her, by being able to crawl into bed and get good sleep and if you couldn't, then let the reason be anything but having to do with her--god almighty, how many women like her had you encountered in your life, and already your father's voice was drilling down to the very core of the question: how many times had you met people like her, and how many times had you let them get to you, bother your harass you, ******* up, make you look bad, ruin your sleep, ruin your day?--and you still hadn't found a way to not give a ****, you still hadn't found a way to disconnect from caring about whatever it was that made you feel like it was your reputation on the line?--your old man was right in his own way, though: you cared far too much about how you were perceived than you wanted to believe you did, and wasn't all of this, wasn't your insomnia over this ***** the proof of it?--and now you were going back to your old nervous habit of chewing at the dead skin of your fingers, watching them become gnawed and decayed and all because of this nonsense you had let go to your head--and you wanted to think therapy had made you better somehow, that it had opened up the pathways in your mind to the "self-talk" that was going to save you?--did you call this bit of torture salvation?--but no, it wasn't like this every night, it really wasn't...only when things got to you, only when you were stressed out...but still, the question should be, "why do you allow yourself to get stressed out over situations out of your control?"--invariable, it all leads to these dreams where the undead find you wherever you go to run and hide, and last night you'd gotten especially clever and told yourself if all else failed, you could hide in the walls, and yet, you had seen her climb into those walls, which is when you knew even your dreams were smarter than you--enough was enough though, right?--no way on earth or in hell should you allow any of this to continue: you were a grown-*** man in his mid-forties, you were a hard worker, you were good at what you did, and more than anything else, this ***** did not get to decide what kind of a person you were--you needed to detach yourself from the idea that she was going to make your life a hell, that she was going to do this or that to you because what was all that anyway?--it was just worry atop worry, and all of it was useless and needless, all of it was based on fear and as you'd been asking yourself for the last few decades, when had fear ever served you?--all of this only seemed like you were in prison, but it was one you had built for yourself...wasn't it bad enough your old man had drilled into you not just those words of criticism about how you'd let everything "get to you," but also that he'd made you care so much, too much, about what others thought because you were always trying to please them just like you were always trying to please him?--and how often had you been able to do this successfully to the point where you didn't have to try so hard anymore?: never--you had never succeeded in such a venture because there was always another hour, another day, another task for you to accomplish to another's satisfaction...this was the paradigm you'd been locked into...but it wasn't too late, for look, just look at how you'd analyzed all of this, at how wonderfully you'd dismantled all the **** that surrounded the real reason why you wasted others to accept you, to find you and label you as "good"--that never would've been possible before, you would've just stayed awake the whole night long and woken up in a foul mood and let it ruin a new day...but not anymore, right?--well, almost: because while the slogan "knowledge is power" seems like an empowering one, what is it really?--do you feel any more powerful than you did before you started having this conversation with yourself?--were you going to be able to make all this ******* in your life disappear just like that(!) because you'd suddenly figured out that you wasted people to think highly of you because you'd never been able to get your father to think highly of you?--no, no, because there you were turning over and over in bed trying to unlock the thing that would let you live again, that would let you sleep again...there you were begging for mercy, for a clue as to how to do this nightwork within you, for it felt like you were being made to dig your own grave whenever this happened to you, and the deeper you dug, the more out felt trapped in that hole you'd just made deeper--what else could you do but make it deeper?: but when had you looked up, when had you asked if you couldn't just dig your hands into the packed earth and climb out?--this is how and where your imagination had failed you, for yes, you had managed to fal, back asleep, it hadn't conquered you quite so much...but here you were being presented with the facts all over again that it would happen again and again and that you were doomed to allow it to because, really, who didn't want others to think well of them?--you were always going to be human--

as if in answer
the rain starts ******* down on your roof
and instead of wondering what you were
going to do for the rest of your life
if you never found anyone to be with,

you just ended up feeling the heat kick in, the
blower spraying you with tepid air that was
miles above what it was like outside,

and that's all you needed to convince you
you were just the animal you always believed
yourself to be--

it's sad you can't get the day's disasters
out of your head because even you
we're saying to yourself as you pulled
up to your apartment that in ten years,

not only would you forget all about the
petty ***** who made you feel like you'd ****** up
when you hadn't, but you'd be able to laugh that
you thought "******* up" meant that they could
use you until there was just nothing left...

and what's even sadder is that you waste your life
dwelling on these things that will be ghosts of
ghosts, the dead and forgotten, the things you really
won't be able to summon up from the depths of the past
because, truly, that's how important they are:

but right, right...
because it's the present, and because you're in
the "here and now," of course things matter to you,
of course how people see you matters to you

even though you know this always has been and
will continue to be your own individual
path to destruction--

you could get caught up in all that nonsense like you wanted to, or you could just jump right into the fray like you did last night--the choice is yours, but you shouldn't mistake one for the other: the former is filled with nothingness and lifeless characters who are only ghosts in your mind, while the latter is at least a struggle to figure out what all this **** really means and where you need to go, what you need to do to make it all work--take what happened last night when you got on the bus: there was no room left except in the space right behind the punk girl who was chewing gum--now, you knew it was a bad idea, but what were you going to do, grab some ceiling bar and sway, and lurch, sway and lurch till you got where you were going?--hell no, it was supposed to be a civilized world, and so you'd wanted to sit--in your head, you'd already earned the right to sit just by virtue of there being a seat, just by you wanting to sit down without ever wanting to push someone else out of the way to get it...so when you finally did change your own mind and convince yourself that she was just some kid trying to act cool, that there weren't going to be any problems, that's just when she pressed that button underneath the armrest that adjusts the angle of the chair, and the whole thing headrest and all, came crushing down on you so that you had to look across at the women you'd come onto the bus with, the one who was supposed to be your lover and your friend, and you knew from the reaction on her face, which was fear and horror mixed with laughter, that you were once again allowing yourself to play the ******* clown, and all so that it would take the edge off of what you really wanted to do and say--who the hell did that little ***** think she was, anyway?--she knew you weren't supposed to lean the chair back that far, she knew there was next to no legroom back here--it was between the rear of the bus and her chair for christ's sake!--and yet as you felt your face pinging with both the pain of sudden discomfort and with the u deniable and stinking presence of the upholstery that had been filthied by years and years of ***** hands, *****, sneezes, and smoke, you also felt through all this that she was getting comfortable in her chair, that punk girl, that she was maybe even readying herself for a nap as you were living through a new experience of being torn between losing your **** asking who the **** she thought she was and the civil propriety expected of you to solve all of this amicably, or at least without harsh words and ***** looks...but if anything had been the story of your life, it'd been this very thing: how to not lose your mind when almost every ******* button was being pushed and pressed over and over to make you do just that--it wasn't an easy thing to first wrest your whole head from between the wall and her headrest and then lean to the side and whisper to your friend that you really needed to move, that you'd meet her at the next stop if you lost each other on the bus, and her silence meant exactly that: she wasn't giving up her seat for anyone or anything--she'd seen it first and had gotten there first and it was hers by right of this layman's etiquette, it wasn't like you were going to argue the point with her because you knew she was right--the seat she was sitting in was hers, you weren't suggesting that she change seats just go be closer to you, just because the two of you were together--what was this, middle school?--it's not like this was a nightmare or something, you'd just have to find each other later on, no big deal, right?--except that for you, it was a big deal: it wasn't that you were asking her to trade places with you or surrender her place and that she should go find another because she was smaller than you, no--you were just hoping she'd want to give up her seat in order to be closer to you, and you couldn't help but feel a little slighted and you knew it wouldn't take very long before this "slighted" feeling made you feel put out, that once more, you'd be expected to hold your tongue and get over it because when compared with the "big things" in life, what the hell was her not wanting to exchange her comfort alone for being uncomfortable with you possibly in a standing position till the bus pulled into the station?--it wasn't a big deal at all, you knew it, but it did feel a little "larger than life" just because of the physical discomfort you'd been put through just now...seriously, what ***** would've just stayed there being squished like a bug between the wall and that punk girl's seat?--in your head you were playing alternate ways you could've handled that whole thing that wouldn't have resulted in you squeezing yourself out of what had felt like the jaws of death around your skull, you had started imagining what might've happened if you'd simply asked her to put her seat up a few degrees so you could pretend you weren't a ******* veal being prepped for slaughter, imagined her response to be, "it's my chair," and doing nothing about it, which would've prompted you to say, "but it's my fist," and what kind of trouble could you have expected after that bus ride when the thing finally pulled into the station?--she would've taken a picture of you with her phone, gotten a cop, and you would've been right back in trouble just like you felt you always were, like your old man had always told you you'd be because of that mouth of yours--and in the life you'd always wanted to live, the one where people did sort through their problems using communication, using the experienced gleaned from previous and present relationships, the life you often lived yourself where you heard yourself speaking the words in the way that you'd always wanted to speak them where you could convince yourself that you really and truly were that person, that man who could refrain from all violence in order to serve the greater good of actuating all desire through talk and thought and connecting with other people, like this you had convinced yourself this was the norm, that everyone should just ask things politely and be gentle about getting rejected or when life handed down some pretty rough **** to deal with...how many times had you heard yourself speak such words that you couldn't help but think we're too soft or seemed too obsequious...but were they "civilized," were they peaceful?--yes, they had been, but maybe they'd been too civilized, too peaceful, and maybe the propel who'd been listening, those you'd been dealing with had mistaken your kindness and respectfulness for weakness--hadn't it happened before, and hadn't it brought out the very worst in you?--because, in unwind response, you had become the animal: it started with that look of yours they used to call part of your "black mood" and then sometimes it would escalate into the kind of cursing that pre-empted a scene of violence--between these two things, people usually caved or the situation resolved itself, but how had you felt afterward?: always like an animal and never like the educated man you'd spent all your life cultivating from the deadness they'd given you to work with, from the nothing they'd given you as a blueprint for success in this world--yes, you were a wolf, but life had made you a lone wolf, and now you were growing tired of all of it, tired of being put into these situations, tired of having to do the exact right thing in any given situation even if you knew it was someone else's version of what was right you were being judged by...and what were you going to do?: dump her on her *** because you were expected to "be a man" both by finding another seat and by intimidating the punk girl into submitted to your will?--who could satisfy both at once?--you didn't need this kind of judgment, it was bad enough already that you all "all this" just having a blast with ******* yourself up with all these options that weren't really options at all--if you gave the girl a ***** look, your woman would snub you because if it and she wouldn't let you forget it--for years later, you'd be called out for behaving like an animal...and yet if you said nothing and found another seat, she'd be mortified that she had chosen someone who wasn't a "real man"--god, how many times had you wanted to show her that if being a "real man" meant using violence or the penchant for using violence as a first response to any and all problems, then you would always be the "real"-est of men...there was no way to win this, it was the hallmark of civilization after all--you might've wanted to think you were a "lone wolf," but weren't you with that woman not giving up her seat back there, weren't you on a bus full of people?--weren't you going to busy yourself for the rest of this day and most of the next trying to get your mind off of this flashpoint that had almost become an outburst not "then and there" but in the here and now?--and what had been the chances of you coming out of all of this looking good, what were the chances that you'd find her at the station after you'd both gotten off the bus without a moue of disgust on her face you'd be expected to ignore and also ask her about because both would show you cared too much, both would show you'd ****** up, both would show there was no way to win, which was something you knew in advance, that you'd known just as soon as you got up lurching and swaying from ceiling bar to ceiling bar looking for another seat...but that didn't mean you were used to it, not yet anyway--

did you really mean what you said about sleeping and the tiger biting off your head as you slept
so that you died and didn't even know you were dead till you never woke up again?--

that's certainly a sad story, but it reminds me
of the mountain lion i saw coming to work last month,
the way it's eyes glowed green and yellow,
the way it looked up at me without thought or
consideration...

who was i going to pick a fight with now, right?

and yet here i am doing it all over again to myself,
maybe because there's no one left to battle who
wouldn't eat me alive,

but here i am thinking of meeting you at last,
thinking of telling you i'm excited, but apprehensive, that i'm looking forward to it, but
dragging it in my own way just because
there's no telling what's going to happen,
how you're going to react to meeting me in person
for the first time...

you're right, it might go terribly, it might be
uncomfortable... or still worse, it might be one
of those meetings that is neither wonderful nor terrible,
just one that's "meh," that leaves the both of us
disappointed and turning back to our precious
dating apps once more because what other alternative
do we have other than loneliness, or settling for
someone with whom we already know we'll be
miserable...

that shouldn't be us tomorrow,
we've come to far too settle,
that shouldn't be us tomorrow,
starting at each other trying to make small talk
wishing the other was someone else--