If I saw me, looking at me too long,
I would call the cops.
I would throw bottles.
I would chase me to the hospital.
I would.

It’s all good.
They say sleep it off.
The toxins leave after a day or so.
I have been waiting
for a life time for them
to leave.
Its way past Miller time.
Its dig a grave, and fill ‘er time.

I hate that my brain
spills this incestual garbage.
That carnal knowledge was a video disk
I wore out
instead of learned about.
I hate that what I am
is something like a celibate celebrity
in cellblock D.
I wish I could smile,
but there is a big old weight on me.
I just want to smile goddamn it.
I want to hear silence
when I am eating a sandwich,
and maybe
be a little braindead
with no meaning behind it.
I want to feel good.

There is an elephant
on my cerebral cortex
choking out my breath.
And I don’t know why,
Luther Lex,
how much you got left?
When do I go next?
When can I puff out my chest
with the three on my chest,
without putting the nice
psyche ward vest
on the solar plex?

If madness was personified,
he died in ’95
and came back to life.
He witnessed me
by the lonely swing set
and said, This one has hope left.
take it, in the form of a pill
and crush it, make a nasal nugget,
slowly inhale from it.

Now take all your dreams
and put them behind a wall.
Let the boy read the books
but never let him get close.
Pull the weights on his head
and label it medicine.
And when he goes off them,
call it depression.

 

Jason Wright is the editor and founder of Oddball Magazine. His column appears weekly. His third book, Train of Thought 2: Almost Home is available now.