November’s Meditations

I am sitting, waiting for February
shifting my legs against metal,
uncomfortably warm in early winter,
I think I have nothing to say.

Arranging, rearranging my hands
they sit nice
so I sit nice.

How old this room is,
like time is close by.
I want to call it political
most things are.

The gaudy virtues;
the communist essays I ignore;
the hand-to-heart muses I adore,
tits out on the museum wall;
and the riots, of course!

My lipgloss fuses with my spit.
I am obliged
to my upbringing.

I could not say
everyone wants to say something,
but still,
I want to say it.
And I will swallow my own hand
looking for the middle.

Perhaps a foreign god,
or simplicity,
or every law repeated to me
will show me my own wit.
I fear naiveté as emptyheaded innocence,
so unintentional!

Live like a human.
Let me do nothing while I reflect.

Do something.
Dad says
do something.

I am sitting, arrogant, unhappy, warmer.
The songbirds are migrating.
The leaves have already died.