My Generation

My Generation

Ask me about the hands of the man of the house

and I’ll tell you that he is not home.

I’ll yell from the peaks of the mountains, scraping the smoggy sky

No! I did not mend the bent tips of his leather gloves,

nor stuff in a brown sack knickknack snack bag

sandwich sentiments and send him off towards the masses.

Or neatly stack cotton atop cotton, atop rinse cycle repetition,

mundane membrane tasks, thoughts,

caught between pages of self help, how to—Be.

Be told what to be, how to see—what is me. Gobbledy Gook.

Ask me how I spend my days and I’ll tell you,

Go To Hell.

Now, ask me how I spend my nights—and I’ll invite you there.

To the hell of uptown found homes,

stone-cold decisions set in unassuredness,

growing up, growing left, growing different.

Growing Weird.

Stoned realizations, Brilliance!

Retreat. Regret. Rethink. Repeat.

Go Ahead, Ask me what goes on,

behind the façade of snapshot picture frame windows—

broken glass, superglue, dried up superglue.

Hard time pass by with the blink of an eye.

Seamless—

onto singing, screaming, giggly shouts,

weekly calls of relief across streets.

Friend? Acquaintance? Stranger? Foe?

Flashback to picking poison,

cashing checks or clutching quarters,

one in the same when blurred together by broken memories.

We do it on purpose. We hail it with purpose,

when we know—in our racing minds, difficult hearts,

and percolating pupils. Speeding, Slowing, Stopping, Starting.

Strike that—never stopping—not really,

We know that within our minds we have not yet become inclined—

To Find.

Discernable purpose, fleeting purpose, pleasing purpose, gleaming purpose,

in the evening of progressive purgatory.

Ask me about My Generation.

But do not dare go and request explanation.

It’s all-relative.
Poetry & Citizenship / 2012