Elixir

I’ll tell you why I chose the elixir

Given my choices

I’ll explain to you every bit of what you need to know

And even previews of what you want to know

I will spill out newspaper clippings and tell-all novels

From the collapsing sopping wet cardboard edges of my hover ville

A gun to set my pace

Traipsing through early morning sunrises

In turkey neck flannel and budding raw masculine sexuality

Patches of stubble

Stink of changing hormones and nervous urges creeping

I could have used my gun with the men

As the winter morning gas station Marlboros and day old reheated coffee no creams

Invited me to take the four-wheeler out

And shoot

I chose to run from the truth about weapons

That weapons killing are only half of their issue

Weapons, more importantly, give the shooter a choice

And I never wanted to be given that choice

Do not burden my ATV shocks to carry that weight back to the campgrounds

My gender sent me a basic postcard to come play in the early morning fields of

Choosing the final chapters of whatever was in sport

My dickmates asked me early on to decide if what I had was a weapon

And I swallowed the inevitable fate of a terrorizing childhood social dilemma

To stand proud with no weapon but a favor

Request

An empathetic extension

But never a pain

I was offered once a noose

Woven so completely for me

Convenient and martyred with fray only where dramatic

Scores of enthusiasts inside of a world we all see everyday

Contribute to everyday

Live in everyday

Share everyday

But never really physically enter

Interweb Media System Communications

Anyway, scores of them

Carefully downloading and extracting the contents of a custom fit noose

There are many reasons to offer someone a noose

Each of them carefully crafted boxes with lines drawn on the inside

And instructions where to stand written backwards

On the sides that are off limits

Come inside where the rain cannot seep into your make-up eyes

Raccoon eyes are out! Hello?

Enjoy the ideas but never the desires

Step to the side and fill out the form

We’ll let you know what its your turn

Eyes on your own personalized paper

And while you wait

We’ll be fitting you for your noose

I was never one to read

No point in lying

So I stayed in the lobby with a noose

And hormone circumstantial blues

Until some friends of mine saw me in the window

And I saw no reason not to leave for a bit

I had time for a cigarette anyway

I didn’t bring my noose

With me

Then one morning I woke

And found on my nightstand

Well, almost knocked over on my nightstand

Because I am not a morning kind of person

This little elixir not tall enough to be poppers

With Alice in Wonderland labels

Fuck the Dumb Shit

And

Seriously

Now I walk into rooms full of nooses

Watch men shoot deer from the schoolhouse windows

And wait for my next weapon of choice

Be it ninja star catty wit claws tossed by angry gay men

Like ultimate Frisbee in the quad

Or dumbed flat and insistently rough armor shields from aged enlightenment seekers

I watch and weigh my options

And the weight of my load

Because life is far to heavy

Carrying too many weapons

Besides

I need to maneuver with ease

I am still wandering hallways and shores

Trying to find out what exactly constitutes

The dumb shit

Major

I keep dehydrating myself

Because it’s good to need something

Other than poetry

You know what you need,

Poet

You know what you need is overstatements

And understatements

Not bank statements

It seems as though what you thought you in fact needed

Will sadly bring you no more than you have

How wonderful would it have been

In the event

Of this American capitalist (stay with me)

Truce and agree-ance actually holding more than noodles

But soup

It is a lie, however

And it seems these dreams of yachts and custom made clothing

Implied wealth waving invisible from the concrete as though

It is assumed rather than created

Are never fully realized any more than a Rom-Com

Montage makeover

Because time and reality clutter this world

Void of utopian basics

Bogged down by the truth

And the humidity

My god the humidity

Reminding summer days they are alive but not all well

But I was raised in a swamp

Jumped from my lily pad

Flew through the air

And landed in another boggy balmy humid swamp

I can take the humidity

And you know you are more than okay with it, Poet

You know you love those overstated saber-toothed giant woolly

Painfully real brutal truth-tastic nastinesses

The nights filled with tears and screams and whinny complaints

Set to unfortunate realities

And tasks at hand

You complain about the humidity

But you love being shirtless because of it, Poet

You love your insistent candor and fistfuls of wit

So perhaps dreams of arid dry heats out west

And safely tangible disposable hearty suburban kitchen islands

Filled with junk mail and credit card statements

Are in fact not at all what you really want,

Poet

Perhaps the ugly, bitter, sweaty, whoreish, brash, brazen, seductive

Seedy, underbelly truth

Is that you need something no one else in this world needs

Other than poets

To suck barnacles from the underside of life’s biggest great whites

And scream in joy at the amazing ride zipping through thirsty under currents

For the bargain price of lamentation

Everything for the sake of study

The study of sciences

And arts

But mostly just vain arrogant selfish needs

How dirty a little truth to discover, Poet

But you need rough whisky shot purging animal noise sweat stained

Craziness

It’s perhaps the only explanation you can understand

And the only thing you can fully explain