Tag: Second Person

Goofball

Oh come now, there are multiple reasons
why you shouldn’t screw in a lightbulb that way.
Primarily, you’ll shatter its fragile exterior
and gouge your hand,
smearing precious blood all over your clothing.

That tunic you bought at the Sears yesterday (don’t ask how I know)
will be absolutely ruined. The fourteen dollars you spent
will be for naught. I know you don’t see that
as your perfect (or even preferred) scenario, so
stop acting like a goofball and listen to me
when I teach you how to do something.
Do you want a repeat of the zombie survival drills?
Didn’t think so.

To and Fro

Suppose you start stammering
at these shimmering jewels
on your nightstand, as though
you’ve established some
sort of language connection
in the realm of Greater Jewelese.

You do innately understand
that jewels possess no mental capacities,
but that seems only to fuel your curiosity
as you divulge your deepest secrets
to their faceted surfaces

(eg. the state
of your psyche, regardless of stymying
ethics preventing your profits, etc.).

It beats talking to a therapist,
you tell yourself
as you realize
that a counselor would only cost
a fraction of what your precious stones
just ran you at the jeweler’s stand

(and then it dawns on you
that you never left home this morning,
and you’ve been hallucinating
those jewels all this time).

You take the opportunity to sit up in bed,
wishing
that you could at least have some kind of
shiny bauble
to stare at

(cursing
the day that you broke your bedroom window
while throwing your weight
to and fro,
resulting in a cardboard and
duct-taped mess).

———-

First draft posted to WHARVED in 2014

Wink Wink

Don’t allow the accomplishments of the more senior members of the artistic community frighten you into stagnation, young man (i.e. the type of artist who thinks that he’s probably getting a bit older these days [as one would naturally experience while living some kind of existence as we currently know it] but wouldn’t care to complain about it to anybody in his age group, because [after all] we’re all experiencing our own contemporary struggles that leave very little room for any kind of self-actualizing, let alone exploration of forms that connect our consciousnesses to one another in the form of communal expression).

Just continue to do what you’re going to do (wink wink, nudge nudge, say no more), and the self-prescribed purpose of your toiling will eventually unveil itself. The purpose may have actually [indubitably] been there from the start, and you (the recipient of a lifetime’s worries and schematics) are only just awakening to the possibility of its interconnectedness and unbounded potential when merged with the human psyche.

Then [and only then] will you uncover the true nature of our fictitious narrative centered around the cultivation of blue cheese cultures (and please don’t ask a tedious question as to why it’s cheese over every other possible culture, we’ve heard them all, trust us).

Regime

Chili leaks all over the seat,
failing to save itself
for a more opportune moment.
At times I’ll see that incontinence
and laugh, comforted
by my own relative regularity.

But when the cowbell strikes 10PM
and you’re losing your marbles
at a steady rate, none of these things
matter anymore. All you can do is
gesture wildly at the skies
with the hope of retrieving
that golden beacon of self-doubt
from the prickly impersonator of human emotion.

He’s been around a long time,
a real long time (if you want to get technical).
His name is inconsequential, for
one must only conjure his essence
to perpetuate his unholy regime.