"better off bad"

this week will have been a week of not getting done
the things I wanted to do and in their place
not even having a lot of fun
just sitting around with a sad look on my face
my muse came to the store where I work
she acted like she didn't even know me
I know I deserve it I've been a jerk
muse where are the beautiful things you used to show me
I watched as she made her way around the discount tights
handling each one with her long dawn fingers
evening already upon me and the night's
desolate cold settles through me and lingers

last night when i was feeling ill
i took myself a sleeping pill
and now it's true I got some rest
but for time i am 600% more pressed
for far too late that pill I ate
and woke up very much too late
thanks to the pill i am feeling better
but in wasting most of the morning it was an abetter

when the rain is heavy in your heart and in the sky
sometimes you feel like you won't mind it when you die
but when you are about to die life rises up in splendor
at least that's how it is for me even when I'm on a bender

sometimes you don't want to do simple tasks
that if you did them would be easy
like buying plane tickets before someone asks
hey didn't you buy those yet jeezy
today I was sitting around here for like
a couple of hours on end
just wheeling around like a kid on a bike
as if time were a generous friend
and time goes on nodding just like it's okay
if I never get up off my ass
time lolls on the couch in a soft spreading way
and laughing continues to pass

you say you want innovative work by fresh voices
but about how fresh I am time has not given me many choices
I was born about fifty years ago
in a seedy small city that would soon be wet with snow
and the business of living has left me scant time
for spritzing my voice with spearmint and squeezings of lime
I dropped out of college for reasons that were personal
and my connection to the youth culture of my time got worse and worsenal
even as a wide-eyed freshman at Michigan U
I was never quite sure what the present demanded that I do
and staleness crept in like daydrying fingers
not only to me but to my fellow-singers
who scribbled scrap lyrics on post-its at work
and left them in lockers an unwanted quirk
to write these poems nobody gave me a stipend
what freshness I have must be freshness unripened
and still to be found. for the moment, I'm seedy
a poem I can spot you, but please don't be greedy
all voices aren't fresh but all voices are real
I'll sing what I can, and that's all - that's the deal

sometimes when you are about to scream
you wake up and realize it was all a dream
when you've done something awful you can't take back
like ordered a full-scale nuclear attack
or spilled hot coffee on your friend's new baby
or when asked if you would assassinate some guy said maybe
when the streets have changed their names and all
the houses burned out black and tall
it's nice to know it wasn't real
but in fiction we want to believe what we feel
since it's all made up anyway why rein it in
all nightmares should be real or why bother to begin
at leasts that's what writing teachers say
to get you to write in a particular way
myself I like to throw a dream or two in
of squishy steps or spooky ruin
my nights are just as vivid as my days
so I think stories about dreams deserve equal praise

New Yorker, where are you? Come bang on my door
Come pant at my windows all ragged and yearning
I've practiced this interview since I was four
And these facial expressions, half-turning

Atlantic, you ought to be quoting my phrases
In large type at eye-soothing intervals
Where are the reporters with soft glowing gazes
Why haven't you answered my calls?

Guardian, what are you guarding? Your ass!
You fear to be linked with my power
If you had any sense you'd give Kate Bush a pass
And plaudits on me you would shower

For decades untold I have spun out my silk
All sticky and slinky and binding
What's wrong with you beard-oil-soaked bros and your ilk?
Why's the road to the mainstream so winding?

New Yorker, I used to, I freely confess
Express for hand-sew zines a preference
But that was the past! Now I want some redress
It's time for some glossy-mag deference

Atlantic, perhaps in some long-ago comeback
I quipped that I thought you too staid
But now I'm an eminence grise, you old ballsack
Attention demands to be paid

Guardian, guard yourself! Waves of regret
Will wash up like trash on your shore
If you don't give me all of the love I should get
You'll open a perilous door

I'll tell all my friends and they'll tell all their friends
We'll fall like a wolf on your fold
Journalism will meet some ignoble-ass ends
You deserve it for acting so cold

You'd better get with it, you dry-husk Hearst tools
You'd better get wise and get cracking
If you don't start your fawning this minute, you fools
I'll know that your judgment is lacking

It's not that I care that you don't seem to care
My hide is as tough as my worldview
I'm just sorry for you that your life is so bare
And you don't wield the fanbase that I do.

When I was just a whining wain
My life a parched and soundless plain
I thought some fame I'd chance to fish for
And landed more than I could wish for

I dreamed my letters to the past
Were answered, and a friendship fast
I forged with heroes of the lost age
Prior to my temporal cage

This guy could have been real. I read
A lot of books. Besides, the dead
Are fictions all: who gives a tup
If technically I made him up?

I liked him more than any real friend
Knew him better, felt that I penned
Something truer than mere fact
In that sense it was not an act

People don't forgive you much
Afraid to be too soft a touch
In a flash you're out of fashion
Blaze out bright and end up ashen

And in three hundred years or sooner
You're just another unproved rumor
Part of the past's abysmal teeming
Never known except in dreaming

no matter how far up you go
down will come for you like a rodeo
that left town three years ago and is coming back
slowly but surely along the old ox track
if you walk long enough you will get someplace
even if the locals keep throwing beer in your face
and when you do, will your real life begin?
no you just have to start over again

wouldn't it be a better world if
instead of working at a desk and getting stiff
in my knees and back the way I do
I could go flying through the air like you

of course then I would have to eat worms
and probably my feathers would be full of germs
and my stools would be proverbially loose
still sometimes I wish I could fly like a goose