What I want when I confess my life is unmanageable

     Derek Ellis

 

is for alcohol to seem less appealing, less like a key

into the world I can’t see anymore, less like a dog

curled at my feet waiting for its feeding, the teeth

less menacing, my life less uninteresting, my life less

like a constant confession where the morning stars

sang together and all the angels shouted for joy.

I can no longer believe in a power greater

than myself. What happens when the earth’s seasons

pass before you without interest?

In the room where paint sings psalms, where

the television is praying and asks me to join, where

the armored doorjamb is rusting through,

I’m constructing my own echo.

I command the air: Hello, lovely and tender friend.

I pat the air as if it were a head; I open the mirror

on the wall for all my pain—here. Come and tell

of the hard path beneath your feet, the aftermath

in the after-speech, speak that graffitied language of

youth, how you didn’t want to understand. Now you do.