What Do You Hear Now, Walt Whitman? (17)

17

Suddenly I want to be back in California.
I want to be drunk and write poetry for hours
before passing out on the couch to infomercials.

I watch the pacific fly by my eyes
like I’m driving to work in Santa Monica again;
not staring bleakly at a white ceiling
surrounded by white walls
in some empty white apartment
that seems more random as the hours pass.

Cutting ties to reality,
I try not to let the weather affect my choice in clothing
but my nails dig deeper into my leg
and my tongue has been bit raw.
The alarm clock screeches for hours
before my neighbors finally start beating on the wall
I never really understood talk shows,
but they're on and I don't feel like moving.
I always thought Jesus had bigger plans for me.
The television screen squeaks and hisses
and vaguely blurs into the wall
until even the ocean fizzes and slurs around me.

I empty myself on my bed,
lay there waiting for time to resist its pattern
and to be eaten by the sheets,
falling always and erased from even my mother's memory.

Suddenly California doesn't seem so far anymore.
I walk for hours
but everything is flat and pale,
water is dense but my world is square.
I miss your lifestyle,
fainting in and out across the screen
as my white walls flicker and shimmer
and the ocean's bulb runs dry to passing hours.

I’m following someone I do not know.
She never looks me straight in the eyes,
but she always seems to call me and beg.
Her hair is on fire
and her eyes are empty
like a faint memory of me laying on a bed,
wasted and wrecked and ravaged
like the coastline I once drove regularly.
I follow her intently but our eyes never seem to meet.
Our secret so deep that even I am unaware,
our passion so intense and grotesque
that her smile drools an evil yearning.
Her face cries and I can't seem to fight my interest.
She starts running and I fall behind,
she finds real life and she grabs its hand and squeals.
She laughs
and all I feel is the sudden punch to the stomach that it’s all over.

California melts on the porch.
Fireflies don't even exist in my mind,
the moon dries up and welts
while the bed evaporates
and I find myself lying alone on the floor
amongst puddles and stains,
all torn and tears.
Kids stand in line because its time to go to confession again.