Why So Serious?

Someone is honking behind me.

He wants me to stop gawking at the way

the sunset is gleaming off the skyscrapers and

go while the light is green.

I put on my hazards,

which tells him I don’t give a shit

about intersections, and where exactly

does he think he’s going anyway.

I told my therapist people often tell me

to lighten up.

This confuses me ‘cause I think I take things

way less seriously than they do.

If I pretend my job is really important

everyone’s pleased with me,

but if I talk about how

many people in Texas can now light their faucets on fire,

whoever I’m talking to usually gets

this concerned look in their eyes,

tell me take it easy. Stop being so

intense all the time. It’s not my fault

the most perfect place

in all of Chicago

to watch this sunset

happens to be

right here.

And

I’m

not

moving

until it’s past.

Windy Night

The windowpanes catechize the coffee maker
in the faith of rumble and bang--
a burly, experienced inquiry,
a subtle, burbled response.
A tin can, Jewish, drags
a gutteral chet down the street.

Captive

Why do you stay in prison
when the door is so wide open?
                -Rumi

The weather holds me captive
in the damp, dark basement of this psyche:
steel gray palates cuffed ‘round my ankles,
(my legs in the holes where color should be)
shivering, bare branches beneath my skin,
(they hold up the sky, why not me?)
soot-stained snow camped out
across the dead foliage of my shoulders.
Time moves slower here.
Some days I crouch down,
peer out of the key hole,
wonder how everyone else
does it.