Spray,
A poem by
SHERMAN ALEXIE
<>
man sitting on gang chair during daytime
somebody has left orange peels
on the food court table and I wanna
find the ******* who violated
the social contract, who left
this sticky mess, who thought
their little life was more

imporant than the little lives
of the rest of us, but there are so
many ******* in this airport
and I know that I'm one of them,
I know I've disgusted strangers
multiple times in my life so
I just pick up those orange peels

and toss them into the nearby
garbage bin and I wonder how
any of us disgusting humans
fall in love with any other
disgusting human

and our toenail clippings
and rashes and skin tags
and waxy ears and acne
and bad breath and greasy
farts and belly button bacteria
and crotch humidity
and rank body odor

but it happens all the time
people constantly fall in love
and I bet that somebody in
this massive international airport
has, just a moment ago, fallen
in love with somebody
they've just met and isn't it

amazing how many people
in this terminal have climbed
naked into bed and sweated
into the pores of their lovers
and received their sweat

in return and, wow, think
of how many people in this airport
have conceived a baby and how
many of us have seen a baby being
born in all that brutal beauty, look
at all these women, these mothers
and think of how they wrecked
their bodies in the name of love
and think of how we parents

have welcome our children's
**** and **** and ***** and spit
into our lives, who've had all
of those body fluids splash into
our hands, splatter our faces,
and spray into our mouths,

and so here I sit at my gate waiting
for my delayed flight and I see
a homely man and homely woman
curl around each other like one
hundred orange peels and I smile
because I'm mostly okay
with this world awash
with all that is awful
and all that is good

On the night
At the very early morn
The moon had already risen
Just as a broken gaseous no more sleeps
Somehow, somewhere, a beast trapped, released
No longer is it trapped to the confines of its prison

Eyes that survey
Salivating, wanting,
A prompt to its hunger
Its nostril’s pleasure: my scents
Under a crack of dim, creaming crescent
The uncensored scene of my slumber

The conditions, possibilities, a setting made right for the empty
A glimmer of hope or just the fangs bared for the bark or biting
Once started, the urge, its selfishness to one else, it’ll never lend
The craving has begun; the questionable realism of this game of pretend
A shadowy figure, upon a pair of feet; yours, no, mine, it lurks in the dark

Countless moments to lose the count of, time is held still
Longer and longer, in continuous moments that shows no signs of breaking
Once I had the warming presence of the body of mine besides me, only to be replaced
“A story’s not to be finished without the satisfaction it gives,” is all I find
All we have seen, the sweet smell of lovely dreams still dancing feverously like visions of my mind
Darkness lies beside me, wanting you, cannot be unseen: the ****** features being without a face

What’s gotten is what’s to be deserved: deliberations of the disease that festers the fabric of my thoughts, I pay no mind
At this point, my reality sinks in, run-on sentences roles across the virtual plane called your screen.
Unable to break away from the unrecognizable creature that lies before me, I lose contact with the senses, my nerves have no feeling
The beauty of it all is the art, the science, I love the way how it consumes me, growing over me, light glinting off its fangs still bared
I remember now, I know it, we’ve talked about it before, it calls itself Sherman, our sleep paralysis demon, still I feel the need to be scared
My lovely dreams, he feeds off of, the hunger within, in him, is never satisfied, no matter how many times he tried, he didn’t stop, just enough to make me void, light blinds me, my soul is fleeing.

On the morn,
At the surpassed night
My heartbeat pends
Eternally I sleep, at peace
Those who know me weep
For my plotless reality never ends