Stagnant

Treading water in an empty room,

And picking apart

The dust from the tiny collisions

Between this week and last.

Each investment tightly knit

With intentions to

Host formal conventions

Introducing me to myself

 

Because all night I’ve been fighting

The first things that come to mind

Pulses and bruises,

Whatever she chooses

Writes another song for a peeling wall.

And all day I’ve been trying

The first things I come to find

Footsteps and missteps

Modestly forget

What the hell has been going on.

 

Making familiarities with the melancholy

And prize-fighting thoughts

Assure nothing but a billboard

Aside a mingled highway.

So pull me out

And dust me off

Introduce me to myself.

 

Ripping pages from an old book

And finding that

Each page bleeds into the next

Cataloguing anything but movement

And anything but change

So open my eyes

And shake my hand

Introduce me to change.

 

Because all month I’ve been waiting

For the first light to catch my eye,

Insulin insulates,

But memory forsakes

Whatever high this ghost train might bring

And most of this year I’ve been thinking

Of used words to sell and find

A middleman to make sense

Of parables

And spiritual fills