Even Pharaohs Eat Lunch

Daddy's got it backwords, i mean backwards,
back toward the woods i bear my sideburns
meaning firearms: WANT TO FIRE ON ME?

I scuttle ships with the best of 'em, scoop
skittles like the rest of them, chest in chin,
feeling brave & thin, like a mushroom grin
on a day-glo necklace Santa--Christmastime on Mars!
Not again!

& so-forth, Mars bars, broads at the bars with
the Farmar Jersey on and I say, "Hey, nice
Jersey, what's the deal?" And she says, "Hey,
nice try kid, I'm pregnant, feel," and I say
"Great belly. Oh, a kick? Nice talking to you."

(This is needles-haystack--meaning needless--
to say: I'M IMAGINING EVERYTHING)

And her name is Cynthia and her breasts are
fucking fantastic (while we're imagining we'll picture
her topless, hotter than Megan Fox)
and this fantasy tops the list of weird things
to talk about, like cysts, or conversation with the
wife about your lurid trysts.

& I insist not to be a night-bear, not to be afraid
of the nightscare, everything is a nightwear
possibility: the rug, the furniture, Jones' hat
that was mine which was Amanda's and now:
who knows? Time moves like a globe sometimes:
Around, moving like a clown on steroids, getting
angry for no reason, quoting Danny Glover,
telling Mel not to kill himself.

But that's not the point. Another comma, another mid-
spin re-direct check-point check express-lane bypass
and I die of grass--Digress like Reader's Digest
(now online only)...

Throat clearing done. So I want to say:

I can communicate quite well. Deft language becomes me.
Or, I create it with ease. See how concise we can be?

But the usual limits bore me, I do not walk here,
ON THE SIDEWALK, rather in the grass
(maybe pulling up weeds for the fun of it, fuck you
Monsanto)

Which is why I write like this
like a child who absconds from the bus
mid-transit and gets hit by a semi

yeah, i got a semi
every time I look at pictures from semi-
formal Junior year, drinking that potion, juice
& everclear, ever clear that this year I would be
having a lot of great sex, fucking in the old train
station, but that's getting tawdry.

I mean,
The usual inexact man would say
I color outside the lines.

This is kind of true: It's accurate in the same way
that I'm a kind-of-honest person, which is something
we all attest to, but which is almost always a dangerous
lie, more dangerous than the lies we speak.

It is really this: most of us want to be truthful. We want
to be honest people.

But we fail in that. Every single day
it's like I don't recognize the person in the mirror.
"Hi, Douglas Brain here, um, sole survivor of
a recent airplane crash, um, borderline personality
syndrome (something must explain this madness),
borderline drug-addict who thinks he can write well,
well...." I've already stopped talking because it's the
truth, at least the last part,
and they aren't expecting that... but what if it's
all true? What if nothing really means anything? Such
hard work being a Nihilist, yeah right The Dude.

Let me try again:
"Ok, that was an exaggeration. But you probably
wouldn't hire me or date me. I stay up late and am
remarkably slow at ordinary tasks. I'm regularly late.
Women floor me. Drugs have abounded
in my personal life, like friends, except they aren't friends.
They're drugs.

But so am I, DROUGHT, Drugged Main, an animus
you cannot comprehend, a complex snow leopard
in an otherwise warm, canine world. I am a wolf,
a sad legend. My eyes are capable of tearing up
often. I say things I don't mean
nearly as often as I do the opposite.

I am spoiled, undisciplined, sloppy, somewhat arrogant.
But worse of all, I'm entitled, slopping about like an
over-educated busboy.

People at McDonald's probably work harder than me.
Even at 25, you've got to start somewhere.
From now on I'm taking life seriously, but don't
quit reading just yet, I feel prodigious, like a mummy
waking up, casting off the quilts of dead lunches and
a million sad sandwich stories.