Compilation Poem for May 21, 2015

YOU GOT TO KNOW

Speak for Yourself Compilation Poem, 21 May 2015

By Colin Douglas

When sense just doesn’t make sense,

And the capitalists drink gin and whiskey on airplanes

And cut me in half with a handsaw in my mom’s basement,

And Heaven looks like the lamp section of Home Depot,

A place where literally no one knows me,

And many rows of mourners separate me from the casket,

And the self-help books fit me about as well as I fit Taiwan,

And I see her car turn over and over into that good night,

Acid rain boiling into my eyes,

And I put a blade to my skin,

You got to know:

You know how to meet a fellow wanderer.

This is no longer my war.

A visitor’s gift is what you bear,

Something other than a recursive cacophony,

All these foul-mouthed folks

Ravaging silence.

You bear a puff of air against my face pushing out rhymes,

A quick lick and a promise,

Hair glittering,

And lunch with fries.

I come knocking at your door,

And iron butterflies cavort in sunshine on Christmas morning

And blaze like meteors brought back from France,

Leaving us weak in terror and delight.

Then I am the king of May,

And you are not the girl from my freshman year,

And by God, by science, or by gravity,

I am not going to let it die.