It Doesn’t Mean a Thing

The night air pours into my lungs
frothy and thick.
In an instant,
I am the bleeding volcano
the stony mountain with a soft center
spouting my dark philosophy in billows.

Lost among the drunken taxicabs of absolute reality, I howl.
Slipping between cocktails
like a ghost between the raindrops.
Staying dry
so the world won’t slip.
You called me Apollo once
knowing I was Atlas,
and I said “Go back to sleep baby,
the sun will be coming up soon.”
I spoke with conviction; as if I knew.
You wore a black dress pushed up over your eyes
and I was all dressed in black.

It didn’t mean anything

The thick night air fills my lungs.
I’m trapped in the pelaton of the Tour de Life
protesting my solitude
while protecting my privacy.
There’s something simple about the thickness in the air
that inflates my anxiety
tempered between the sheets
of a thousand, thousand lovers across the land.
It’s uncertainty.

Pedagogues scream with their rulers pointed skyward,
notched erections of order
wrapping the knuckles of my imagination.
Until, to stand in line is to live.
To stop on red is to live.
Until confusion equals freedom,
and blood is a word
just like love is a word.

Until I’m a ghost dodging raindrops
alone in the penumbra of existential night
I am modern man.

I wait
With great anticipation

For the sunrise I predicted.
Sucking air,
alone in the grip of the American night.

And it doesn’t mean a thing.