i tell god if this doesn’t **** me i’ll do something with my life and god is understandably skeptical i’ve made bad deals before but i mean it this time i tell god i’m thirty one years old i’m handshy i’m pretty enough for two and i know i haven’t done anything about any of that and i know i don’t always act like it but right now i’m scared and i have nobody to tell i’m scared and i wonder what i’ve been doing for all this time i mean what have i been doing for all this time was i waiting for the poverty to let up like summer rain was i waiting for the city man to enter frame and smile at the camera no i wasn’t i was writing poems and i was drinking and i was smoking but mostly i was writing poems i was writing poems i gave away like kittens like kittens with miserable bones and a language that can only speak to language and god i guess i’m not that scared but i am sad and i’m sad for being sad and i feel so dumb i feel such a sense of loss i feel it in my mouth like an omen like my little life given body and when it dies i am reminded things can be wasted