Knuckles At Dawn

 

Knuckles At Dawn

 

I just sat down

Am I writing a poem?

No, I’m ordering a pizza

 

Find the coupons

Squint over the choice of toppings

Wipe the tears from everything’s head

 

Until I’m not ordering a pizza anymore

It was never a pizza I was looking for

I never really ordered that pizza

 

I just didn’t feel like feeling

alone

or letting you go and

 

I’d run out of Vonnegut novels and Jurassic Park movies

To read/watch weeks ago or last night or that time I had to be

A thing that was required to answer a question like

 

If you had to be a tree what kind of a tree would you be?

With the instructor eyeballing me harshly

As if to convey that it would be best for the collective mind-hive

 

And everything at war against it

If I’d just sodomize my own soul like a good boy

And say something supportive like ‘sequoia’

 

But fuck em

Because just: fuck em, my soul’s asshole is invincibly sensitive

I’d rather scream ‘Martha!’

 

At the mid-end of a horrible DC superhero movie

Than salute ‘sequoia’ on command like a trained ventriloquist’s crotch prop

So when they asked me what kind of tree I’d like to be

 

If I had to be a tree

I didn’t say sequoia

Or birch

 

Or maple-shits

Or whatever the fuck

We call trees who never frackin’ asked

 

To be called anything in the first place

(They just wanted to be left alone)

(Alone together as opposed to alone/alone)

 

In a room composed for the most part

Of people well practiced in the duty of ironing a shirt

Staring at me waiting for me to declare what kind of tree I am

 

I said Noodle Salad

Quoting Jack Nicholson in a behind the scenes documentary

Of The Shining

 

Nobody in the room got the reference

And the instructor just rolled her eyes like I’d just shit

Her pants and moved on

 

While I sat there counting the minutes

Until I could be back home again watching Buffy with my last cat

Perplexed because, shit, moving on is really hard

 

But she’d just done it like it was as easy

As microwaving a cold casserole of salami

She’d moved on, I mean skip forward to last night again

 

The entire day had been going on in a similar fashion

(salami casserole)

And I was tired of almost everything

So I decided to go to bed

 

But that didn’t solve anything

I just rolled there in circles while Shutter Island

Jumped up and down on my face

 

As I mumbled ‘Knock it off’,

Trump’s choice to head the EPA endorsed Carbon Dioxide

And Shutter Island grumbled

 

“Nickel’s dead.

I sleep on your skull now.

What else am I supposed to do?”

 

The world is a wasteful place and

I’ve got a heart like a dumpster

And a complicated cat who misses her sister

 

If I had to be a tree I’d be an astronaut

If I had to be an astronaut I’d be a maple leaf

If I had to be a maple leaf like I’m a maple leaf

 

I’d be the sort of maple leaf that still gave a shit about

Everything that’s still left worth giving a shit about

Even post-fall and I’d been shed to the ground

 

I’d be the sort of maple leaf screaming

Knuckles at dawn!

At the current wave of American Fascism

 

And everything horrible

the brand new Trump administration

Is trying to hump through

 

I’d be the sort of maple leaf that I am now

Hanging in there on the ground, almost 7 years now

Post-the falling, trying to find my way to move on

 

I miss your tree