Thursday, September 20, 2012

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.

                                   

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