A POEM A DAY

ARGUMENTS AGAINST MYSELF

You busy yourself with the trouble of translating disaster
as if there is something dear to dismantle besides
yourself. This does not make you a writer. It makes you a
chump, another darling calamity caught. You have hooked
the raw of your jaw against a silent cat call. Only you know the phone number
to every ringing heart and you still long for everything. The longing calls
and the answer lasts. This makes you question your own warranty.

Now you are worrying.
For what? You cannot collapse the loudness belonging
to a body born a boom box. The volume knob gnaws like a
crappy chorus I cannot help but swallow along to. Since most of me
is made of tremble, I cannot help but scatters decibels when
someone spits a licking so loud I lash from the way happiness
and sound both open my mouth, how sloppy song step out
in suit and tie my tongue into a tune.

This does not make you a harmonica. I tell myself again.
It makes you a hoarder. Yes. People are plentiful creatures,
but they only distract. With all they profess, their plenteous
confessions come in waves and sometimes they stay
too long, sometimes they hover in the air
the hot air of a lost lover or was it leaver?
The hot air of a lost leaver now porous
now a perfume performing overhead using the headboard as a stage,
your bed head is heavy with what you keep losing. Aren’t you
listening?

I overheard you complain about who’s in your head
and how it is impossible to get over her, and you cursed
your body for being a river instead of a bridge. You lose
yourself in relationships already lost, convince your tired heart
that loving is alive because you remember it. But don’t you remember
the night time? How you forgot love, and washed whatever you had left
in the dirt water of what you remember. Is this what you meant by
giving yourself to tremble? Boy, you are so in your head, you haven’t
heard any of this, have you? Aren’t you
listening at all?