You want part ‘n parceled truth,
ain’t that, ain’t that the truth of it?
You’ve got these deep hungers for somethin’
but it’s really more of a naggin’ gnaw,
‘n you want me to compress, ‘n impress all of it on you.
you ain’t got time to wait.
Ain’t no one got time to wait,
not even for learnin’.
But I ain’t gonna give it to you.
shit’s too complicated for it to even be too complicated.
that death-faced meth-addict ain’t there because she loved to party,
she’s scritchin’ herself finger raw at the memory of hands on her,
hands she used to trust to teach her,
old inspirations slowly wormin’ their way up her inner thigh,
‘n she sees his face in every shadow,
long, long, long before anyone offered crystal.
she spends her highs cleanin’ everything,
tryin’ to wash his smell from her skin.
How’s she supposed to tell anyone?
It was her fault, wasn’t it?
Wearin’ those ripped wrong clothes,
gettin’ in some man’s car,
seein’ him after all these years,
knowin’ she didn’t know much about him.
she was just askin’ for it,
every time she beat him off her,
and she sees ruffled refractions of how things should have been,
in every facet of the crystals,
so she crushes ’em up,
‘n snorts them in lines,
hopin’ to ingest something of what she should be.
course, it’s easier to just slings names,
‘n remind yourself that ain’t ever gonna be you,
course, it could always be just six steps shy of you.
You want truth,
you want perfectly categorized,
the pagan god of pure prioritized distinctions,
you want little compartments the shove all the bits of your live into,
rim-labeled “things I is” ‘n “things I ain’t, and ain’t ever gonna be”
you want, you want, you want truth,
you want sense,
you want to look at numbers ‘n charts ‘n graphs,
you want part ‘n parceled nuggets of truth,
things you can chant yourself to sleep with.
but I ain’t, I ain’t gonna give it to you,
‘n even if I do, it ain’t gonna mean much.
I tried once,
tried to boil all of it that was me down to a single work,
called that shit “the poem”,
4,171 words, over eleven pages,
‘n that was my boilin’ down of things,
pullin’ at the very essence of them.
still fell short,
‘n it ain’t quote length.
There’s always exceptions,
always complications.
