(exhaust)

there’s a trace of optimism beneath your heels —
are you walking on your hands?

i’m perilously close to using a capital letter
in my suicide note unsent / unspent

i’ve a taste for the macabre stewed in offal
awful & awe-filled from watching monochromatic aurorae

it’s not bright enough, this anhedonic scrim
what did you expect — a gloating of fog horns?

i preferred the meep, meep of my volkswagen bug once
now i prefer to suck the rusted exhaust —

a pip of a pipe —
too exhausting to contemplate

What I’m Reading:

This earth will grow cold one day,
not like a block of ice
or a dead cloud even
but like an empty walnut it will roll along
in pitch-black space . . .
You must grieve for this right now
—you have to feel this sorrow now—
for the world must be loved this much
if you’re going to say “I lived” . . .

— Nâzim Hikmet / “On Living”