Food For Thought

I cannot eat what I cannot see.
But that is not what she said.
Actually, she said nothing,
whispered no sweet nothing,
and I answered no questions,
and I still have no answers.
We paused, and came, wonderfully,
to no conclusions.
Like Lost, for instance.  For Heaven’s sake
but not for Christ’s.  Never for Christ’s.
Mary and Joseph sip purple martinis in Paris.
The closest I’ve been to Paris
is an Irish pub in Montreal.
Like every poet, I once wrote a poem called Alone.
Sadly, it did not reference Elvis
or the Wizard of Oz, the way
I would have now: the way Dorothy
was never truly alone, not even with the sand
running down—protected by three wise men
and a little dog, too—
and the way The King must’ve felt so alone
but never was, never is,
someone may have just seen
and kissed him goodbye again,
caught in a trap of collective consciousness
and yet I’m the one who feels awful
for not knowing if he was a dog lover.
I could look it up, I guess.
But I’m lazy, tired, and alone.
If Mary or Joseph or John Locke were around,
they’d inspire me to google it:
Did Elvis like dogs?
And Do all rock stars go to heaven?
Stupid question, really;
I should have titled this thing:
Where Tupac & Biggie Finally Destroy
Morrison and Presley in Doubles Ping Pong.
Some French Riviera resort
where everyone keeps an exotic pet,
like an iguana, a white tiger, or a French girl.
But no, the poem was about a quiet classmate
with dirty blonde down to her thighs;
it was about a library, patience,
and sex I had yet to have.
And I thought it was a conversation
about the ways in which we fuel the mind
and spend our hearts in one breath,
but now I know that we live forever
in a world where lungs collapse and expire.
You could not have taken my breath away
but I could never have written you off;
so there is this short but epic Elvisless poem,
curled somewhere amongst physics
and astronomy papers, and you and I
might have been there between those lines
looking up and paying no attention
to an empty room behind a curtain.
And I wrote in that poem that we served
as the dark’s only nutrition,
shaking as one into a deep sleep’s
permission of nothingness.
And I didn’t know what
the hell I was talking about,
but it makes sense now.
And I really want an apple.

Filed under: Pabulum & Poetry by Benjamin Kail
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