Sometimes, I feel like I’m dragging
around a bipedal bag of meat
for no reason.
Everywhere I look, there is
conflict. Either it’s a comic
taking easy shots at the coming tyrants,
(oh, they’re coming), or it’s an angry white
male with a microphone, restoring order
with a padlock and keys and a combination.
Or it’s a movie about a man’s friendship
with an astonishing, sentient octopus,
opening our hearts with tenderness and nuance…
juxtaposed in my screen life with an ad
for raw baby octopus for sale
by the pound.
Governor Hochul has identified
Creedmore Psychiatric Center as a
destination for the frightening overflow
of illegal migrants. Protests all over the neighborhood.
But where will they go? Who will welcome them?
They are routinely cut up by the media, and
sold by the pound.
I have to find something in my own bones,
something in this bag of meat standing
at the fridge recoiling at how full it is,
I have to find something that’s worthy
of the lungs I was given, the lungs
that breathe me in and out.
Something that animates my own muscles
in the direction of kindness. A gesture
of I’m-not-going-to-hurt-you. An expression
on my face that will make at least one person
smile.
Every day.
Because if I don’t, then every day, my soul will be up for sale by the pound. And at the end of the day the leftovers will be thrown to the scrounging, feral cats in the back.