I used to watch Frasier and Niles bicker to decompress.
Sometimes we all need a little butter and salt on our veggies.

My love, my lover, he told me that he read in Vogue
that the TV show makes women feel very tired, his appeal

to encourage me away from television he deemed potentially
racist, and probably, let’s be honest, at least somewhat accurately.

I don’t even read magazines anymore! But he is right, some
jazzy flash is always trying to slay my attention to the present.

The only glimpse of clarity, what moves in my unconscious periphery.
I do wake up and try to eat like a giraffe: grass and leaves.

I don’t want to construct fences, I love inviting everyone in for tea,
but tea isn’t really for me, I’ve tried, I prefer coffee, lots of it,

and also I worry I am no longer immune to the fear of others, which
can destroy even the best of dreamers and I have not even begun to dream!

To peel aside the ego and peek from behind the mask is one thing.
To throw it in the trash compactor, well, that’s just futile.

I will not anytime ever be burying my notebook and shaving my head
in exchange for an orange robe, there are still things I want to share.

And to you, well, samesies. Do what you want, it’s the only good advice.
Offer your dreams upward, where one can only hope they expand

into clouds heavier than 100 elephants and burst, raining
back down on us as water for our gardens of potential.

I tell my love, my lover this plan and he says, you keep me alive.
We watch trees scream unintelligibly as they dance hard in the wind.

Notice that nowhere on my vision board is other people’s comfort.
This thing I’ve been taught as a woman, the desire to be liked above all,

is being handed a bomb, except no one sees the explosion, it happens
on the inside, causing all kinds of mysterious symptomatology.

When I forget who I am and try to be someone else, it always causes
a fight, and then my love, my lover, he says, where are the cameras?

This is your most dramatic role ever! You’ll win an Oscar!
Although when he forgets his lines the fight continues on and on.

Yes, my love, my lover is right to be frustrated by my permanent
vacation from reality, curled up inside this dusty American fantasy,

putting on the records and closing the door firmly over the two holes
on the front of my head, slipping into a book, where it’s safe.

My whole life I have skipped the books about war.
War poems bore me, I have gotten used to telling myself.

But that is a bold-faced lie. I don’t want to see myself inside them.
The truth is, I know it just as intimately, in a way, this is true.

I have discovered it on my own. Bored people make war.
Take it from me, I don’t want to admit it, but I do it all the time.

Powered by Froala Editor

Powered by Froala Editor