What did you do for your depression today?
I put on a pressed blue shirt with a primary color collar
I sat for a job interview and almost hoped
The inkling of seasons in that undulation
I found a post-it note and scribbled math
December 2008 to Spring 2010
A few months
Summer 2010 to Fall 2012
Two months
Winter 2013 to January 2014
Two months
February 2014 to December 2015
Two months
March 2016 to today nothing
Years wrapped in celibate armistice
Psychological counseling and numb to the look
Nights typing that crimple pedagogy of alone
Sipped Scotch church glasses melted two a.m. ice
Oncology floors and widowers whispering
The secret language of birthdays astrological fortune cookies
Unopened hooligan sugar gawker culture
I do not know how to speak to this
Road out to see Valerie June sing blues country loves songs
Wrapped in kudzu African braid soul land swamp trumpet stomp
Tell you no lies and get naked tonight in front of a mirror
Hug yourself and tell you how beautiful you are
Like a trenchant mantra of uprising
The numb drunk stun lark of midnight feathered empty pillows
To the right singing love songs imagined like closed eyes,
But do not fall asleep just yet
Hold the voice as if bodies exist this body
Would want to speak, the simple inertia of alone
To pay solitude away in writer’s blood
To start telling stories where poetry leaks out
Sexually transmitted feelings and the awful bar light darkness
Of Tennessee time old fashioned whiskey and Folsom Prison blues
Remembering years folded into somebody to love
Of painted lips and Mardi Gras hair, the costume revelry
The audacity to march out suede shoe French Quarter steps
Saying zero words in fishbowl silence
Where demisexual distance faces blur and you wish
You felt something, some direction beyond the blanket
Rationalizations flicking fins and pressing gills
That any current in this water made sense more than any other
Or at all to want to sip, to look into wave and dream
Of love and hours melting into skin-scales
The touched drum beats and southern twilight
Depression comes like a garden of snakes
You lie down into the weaving tendrils nightly
Waking up into the heinous sunlight
Smile
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