around town looking to rent a place for a bit

i dont read books about anything real
it doesnt work anymore.
gone are the days of seduction
by ideas and images full of promise,
the long nights of transcendence through
other people's transendence that they sold to me,
that i downloaded or stole.
there is no more curious boy adolescing
in the tiny room above the war.
he might be older now but such things dont matter
since he forgot and we're all insane.

a cigarette is the couch is the receipt is the mirror is taking out the trash is the turning page the picture frame is the waning smile is
the paralysis of many tiny futile and
impotent beliefs
fragile as wax combs.
and just as the wax comb is the most labor intensive and delicate thing the bee makes
so is my own concern for life
as something long and particular.
what do i care about?
ask the tree it might say nothing
it might say something you think it should say
ask me and it might one thing or
nothing as well.
yes, it's me. yes, i am more than a bowl of ambition
trying to push my own smile out into the world
insisting that it's it. it's love. it's worthwhile.

what is it that i dont know and
will it save me?
this is the question under the dirt
for the deeper-digger and
not for the one who stops satisfied to be satisfied with that they've found at the surface.
this is the question for the one who lives upon the edges of edges.

one day the world is the world
the next it is not.
it crumples and shifts like the idea that it is.
why my nose is bleeding
why it feels like this
why i write and go on
these are not things i know.

be careful, i don't need you.