Gamestop; perhaps patent your tractor beam
Solitaire, Ethernaut; each time, convinced I had this beat
Fucking herpes of my ever-ebbing time
But these trees run deeper than I thought
The roots entangled with the years
and broke through the self-perplexing crust
long before it dawned on me to dig
Believed "happy" could be self-taught;
Teen to adult was night and day
but the storm gained steam, never burned off
and my skies got bleaker, harsher shades
Turn me over
The same shell I'd retreat to, dodging social arenas, has capsized
Trying to, lying inverted, convert an introvert version of me
to say cunning things, have sharp-sighted input, go network, get laid
Chewing ice on a barhop, Irish goodbye and I'm home by ten
Don't call unless you want
to sift through Netflix's suggestions
or critique Paint Leaves songs
Don't call unless you want
to click through every Reddit subreddit
or help me make pizza (za's brah)
Dreams got deleted from my skull
Anchored, continental U.S.
Can't dam the steady income flow
Cut off the Polar seltzer, rent
I should be teaching, story-telling
sky-diving, saving elephants
from poachers who hunt them for their tusks
and see how they like teeth ripped from their heads
But I thought that I could bob and weave and block its jabs, extend the fight
I thought that I could wave red cloth to "Ole" screams and sidestep life
And Oh, what an error
an uppercut lands on the glass jaw that turns out the lights
And oh, what a terror
a horn pierces right through the breastplate, the crowd's faces turn white
Twisters of childhood bedroom trinkets
kitsch knickknacks, bricks from SIS
Asbestos cylinders rip right through the Commonwealth
towards the old fairgrounds
Lurking in the basement
Flicker from the outlet
Creaking in the attic
Hair Einsteins, R.L. Stines find trepid necks
If I held up a flower,
would you smell anything
If you brushed right past me,
would you feel anything
If I wrote a line about you,
would you hear anything
If you looked right at me,
would you see anything
Or not
Because I'm a ghost of my former self: of a hopeful kid
Of my former self: of a boy named Ted