Zuleyha read my fortune
in the dried coffee grinds
and tossed the saucer toward
the future, its arc across
rented a chemtrail through
the sky, and I didn’t ask why,
I didn’t point it out or make
a scene about the vision
I’d been led to believe, as if
with a shovel in a lame novel,
as if my ears were a septic chute
that accepted every story,
no matter how far from true.
I didn’t mention my nomad past
or how my brain’s forced from place
to place in caravans, canal boats,
tents reeking of frankincense, pine,
or how that’s just another story
I’d been fed with a shovel.
I realized somewhat early on
in this early life that most people
are eager to live their lives
like stars beyond a projector,
a drive in, seemingly unaware
of the dark screen, and willing
to wrong anyone if it means
someone lifts the loose noose
from their own bowed necks—
they almost sprint down the steps.
I crawl up the steps to every
bad decision I’ve let happen,
happy to say I’ve changed,
took notes on each mistake
and if I ever turned back
I was sure to take a different path.
When I go home to the house
I grew up in, it’s not to stay.
As for the story, neither one of us
could say if it was imagined.
I wake some mornings to find
signs that don’t make sense,
suspicious of my own breath
and the sunlight through the slats,
because the world’s senseless
and nonsensical and tense.
A paranoiac and a high priestess
make for one hell of a couple,
our studio’s more like a circus,
we’re trapeze swingers swooping
from corner to corner, blowing
clown horns as we paint our faces
in a shattered mirror. Our strict
schedule requires us to weep
all day and dance at night,
saying I’m so fucking lucky
I met you. I’m so fucking lucky…
I rejoice, I digress, I paint two
red lines under each of our eyes
and step in line, waiting stone like.
I’m well aware it could be me
paranoid and schizophrenic
on the side of the street, paranoid
past repair, not knowing where
the self ends and society begins,
it could easily be me if not
for five or six good people.
As for the lover, I’m damn sure.
I put a poem around her finger
because I couldn’t afford a ring,
which means I’m always already
all in. I push the stack of chips
to the center of the table. I grin.
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