poem of the day 09.20.12

weights

     after jason baldinger’s the lady pittsburgh

i wake

to lift weights

that hurt my arms

and do nothing for my

unquenchable booze belly thirsts

to the weight of old cities on my back

i wake

to five in the morning cat cries

and fan hums

hangovers that are mild

but always there

to bland coffee

and lovely sleep-headed wife

to poems that i’m squandering line by line

i wake

and lift weights that hurt my flesh

to editors that i’m too washed up for

and journals that are done with me like cold ex-girlfriends

so i bark sonnets

to the shivering dog brigades

taking their morning craps

outside my bedroom window

as their owners huff

in sweatpants and sports team t-shirts

clasp their little illuminated worlds

to post a.m. facebook statuses of the damned

tweets from no man’s land

i wake

to this

to lift my weights

to lift my sagging gray skin in the mirror

where i make violent faces meant to prod

all of those lamentable years

into a cohesive conceptual

portrait of the artist as an aging and tired man

and i think the editors are right

and all of these cities that have beaten me down

with jobs and alcohol

they are right too

still i wake

to neighbors showering the dirt and gloom

off of their flabby bodies

to sleep fucks and wine breath

the periwinkle glare

just before the sun rises

with horns honking outside

and damnable brooklyn

hungry to try and murder me again

to sling words

and lift weights that tighten

my worn muscles

to carry cities on my crooked back

places i’ll never understand

though i’ve wandered them endlessly

places that’ll bury me some day

in warm graveyard dirt

on a hill

just below the horizon

goddamn it

i wake.