Not the Day for Compartmentalizing: A Stuck Inside Poem, Day 7

Not in the mood

for the a-lot-of-good-will-come-out-of-this

rhetoric. Not at all.  Not even a little bit.

I’d like to stay with the way

I feel until it makes sense, leaves for good

or attacks out of self defense,

but thank you for your input.   

I can’t Course in Miracles

with you right now.

You’re gonna have to call back

when I’m not sad.

I used to joke with the homies

at pedicab that we should start

an anarchist collective.

Now I wish we did.

I don’t want to sound like the unabomber,

but I don’t trust the government.

Rilke told Kappus, “We have no reason

to harbor any mistrust against our world,

for it is not against us.

If it has terrors,

they are our terrors;

if it has abysses,

these abysses belong to us;

if there are dangers,

we my try to love them.”

I’m trying Rilke,

but the numbers 

in New Orleans

keep rising and yes

I know I’m blessed

and I’m counting the ways

but I’m stressed about

the surmounting cases.

North of forty six.

I looking for meaning and sort through drawers

to decide which picture frame to keep or

which t-shirt to toss.  My phone goes off.

I get an email

with a title that asks me

if I want to lose

the quarantine fifteen.

No thank you.  I don’t need a subscription

to your very personal web gym.

No Redfin. I don’t

want to see the new listings.

I scroll through my inbox until I feel

sufficiently gas lit.

Then decide on sweet potatoes

and cabbage.

If people were M&Ms,

how hot’s it gotta be before they melt?

You know in an argument when somebody asks,

“But, what is truth?” You know who won

that debate? Nobody.

Not the people listening. Not you.