I can’t even go near a painting anymore without

wondering at what point will it finally get encased

in protective glass—this won’t stop anyone

from hurling objects in its direction, but it will

result in the shattering of most projectiles.

And the painting just hanging there afterward,

surrounded by smashed fruit and splintered

pottery, like some disfavored leader—I can’t not

see it. I can’t not think of the queue in the marbled

entry hall, the counter, the request for a one-way

ticket to the gallery. That’ll be ten bucks.

Other Things, If Not More Urgent Things

Other Things, If Not More Urgent Things

How to get close without going over.

How to feign lust for whatever’s on offer.

How the largest possible quantity

of anything is a lifetime. A lifetime

of oat bran. A lifetime of timing belts.

A lifetime of saying SURE, WHY NOT,

I’M ONLY ON EARTH X NUMBER

OF YEARS, and not knowing what

to make X. Sometimes I pick a number

I’ve already passed. I remember

the gambler’s credo—when you only

have fifty bucks left in this world,

you’d better get rid of it fast; the last

thing you want is money around,

reminding you every day of the money

you lost. The recommended

retirement plan is arabesque, then leap

and smash on the seawall. We made

a promise not to catch each other.

Some Toxin

Some Toxin

This is what we get. This is the penance

for extending and extending the human lifespan—

now some people live a hundred and twenty years,

but those years are increasingly spent being bombarded

with adorable profiles of the oldest people,

interviews about what keeps them ticking.

The secret is always some toxin, like bacon or vodka,

and the joke that ensues is always the same:

THE CHEMICALS PRESERVE HIM. That’s all fine,

but just once I would like to uncrumple the Metro section

and find that the key to long life is rage and trauma,

that bitterness girds the organs in equal measure.

If I could choose to be born in any era,

I would opt to predate these longer lives.

There’s so much violence, always. Better to have it

visited on you back when your attackers

would end up dead much sooner. When you would die

sooner, too. All I want is for someone

to understand me, but it seems my keenest friends

and I—we’ve scattered. We’ve struggled for peace,

for permanence, and somehow in that struggle,

we’ve ventured far from each other. This is what

we get. This is the penance. Back when even the powerful

died younger, they would lose one another and dutifully

wait to be reunited in Heaven. We wait for that

still, but now in the absence of Heaven. We say someday

we’ll find each other, year after year on Earth.

Fake Sick

Fake Sick