Commute

​The frames of these college degrees are chapping my ass
every time I try to sit down for just one second and hear the wind in the trees.

All I can hear is the incessant drum beat of 
not good enough, not fast enough, not enough hours in the day.
I am sick of this song.
I’m double and triple booked, 
running back and forth across the freeway of insanity.

Oh, trembling overpass and gun-shy mobile device,
hear my cry.
Car the color of butter,
Starbucks line blocking 
the leftmost line of traffic,
know that I will not rest 
until you have been brought to justice.

And you.
You with the indecipherable vanity plate,
reveal your soft purple anger to me.
I will match it 
with deep scarlet screams 
built upon five head-butts to my dashboard
as the bees buzz in the bushes of the 
median.

And so we go each morning,
the sun slicing the sky like a coconut cream pie.
You applying mascara, he picking his nose,
I scribbling poetry 
on junk mail, my palm, whatever I can find 
without bashing my bumper car into the next.
We go separately.

Separately
but together somehow. 

Because aren’t we together in this? Aren’t we? 
Did you sign up for this shit? 

Wouldn’t you rather be home making strawberry jam,
spreading joint compound on that crack in the dining room wall,
stroking the head of a kitten? 
Tell the truth, wouldn’t you rather be living your life
instead of dropping coin after coin 
into someone else’s broken and thrashing washing machine?

Of course you would.
And what of these huge fucking egos we drag around,
egos the size of double-wide trailers, 
stretching like billboards across our skies,
Shrieking me, me, me. Look at me.

Bullshit.

I am seeking a new language. 
I need more words.
Better words which will allow me to explain the exact way my heart breaks
when I step out into the splintered world each day. 

Fallen oak, broken bicycle spoke, nothing but clouds in the sky.

I fuss and fidget
watch things grow
or fail to notice that they grow at all
I take out men, nail clippers, and ink pens,
the arsenal of survival. 
I gaze at a painting
too numb to notice the blue smudge at the bottom.

I need words that speak less of what I do
and more of who I am.
This jagged scar that is my heart,
of promises that I could not keep,
of a hunger that will never be fed.

All I really wanted
was more time 
under the soft crumpled bedsheets
reading poetry aloud
but instead, I have this fucking commute.