The Second-To-Last Hour

Call it future shock.
Call it mass discomfort with the fact of our own mortality.
Call it what you will, but everyone's got insomnia
these days, up, still up, fretting and fretting,
the text goes like this:
In the future, no more bacteria.
In the future, less traffic
fewer misunderstandings
no new dance craze to catch on to.
In the future, the daughters who spilled
grape juice on the oriental rug are loved
just the same, everyone is forgiven,
all is forgiven.
I'm trying to be at home here
at the back-end of the millennium,
why is every thing so urgent now?
I can't finish the poem
I have to go out and flirt
with anyone, fiercely.
I don't think I've laughed
so hard I couldn't stop,
I don't have the nerve
to weather an apocalypse
yet. I still haven't said
specifically what I meant:
I want to be good. I know that I'm not
ready to stop being angry
at people who accidentally
hit me with their shoulder satchels
on the sidewalk. Are you
as tired as I am? Can you fathom
the knowledge that someone who saw you
stripped last week might clap you on the back
tonight, in this bar, call you by a nickname,
and not ever once say he's been thinking
about you constantly?
Of course you know the way we treat each other is basically dishonest,
but did you know that we are not indignant about this?
My knowledge of this
is too much for the bed.
It won't have me sleeping past noon anymore.
I have to get up and accomplish.
The life I want to lead
involves hanging plants
and its own soundtrack.
Yes. I want to live life ecstatically.
I want to pull back the curtain
and not see the rotten skeleton bones behind it.
It is possible:
Look at the man dancing on the block
in leopard-print g-string underpants.
Look at the blood orange
whose pristine peel
never reveals
its deep scarlet insides

 

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