My Involvement In This Is Marginal

Again it took me all day to do nothing

8 hours of unplanned preparation

to lead me to this moment

lying on the ground prostrate to the world

which sweats and panics around me

I begin to wish for a change

because anything more than a wish would frighten me

and anything less than change would bore me

so I lie bored and brave

I wish for a world where rules are written in couplets

and are mandatory for only those who wrote them

and even then they mean nothing

I remember a girl who’s voice was a soft as swan’s down

and promised to go tobogganing with me this winter

and promised to try my vegan eggnog

I wish for a world where court rooms are held in contempt

and kindness didn’t confuse me more than spite

and spite was not an ersatz emotion for confusion

I remember staring up at the moon flecked with age spots

and stars which were thousands of years old

and finding perspective, but not knowing to what

I wish for a world where elderly ideas pass on in their sleep

and new ideals are not as quiet as baby’s breath

and don’t fall asleep so quickly

I hear the suburban fauna of domesticated cats and dogs

and exhausted lives whir past me

and all I can smell is the tall grass