this is the new restlessness;

Offer me up or auction me off.

Step aside and watch as all of these silly habits

of the hand gesture back to the action

of placing bottle to mouth or setting responsibility

askew along the knife’s edge,

where it shouldn’t have been effectual

but manages to make me feel that

this is no longer my playground

(that which is obviously always missed more).

And while I was praying

for proof in the landscape of my misery,

what pierced through a troubled nest—

sometimes, seemingly—

was someone disguising themselves as forward.

When it comes to that feeling,

when molehill becomes mountain,

tall but eventually calibrated back toward zero

(unless it’s spilling out of every wind-up and pitch),

it gets to a point where I

might as well be asking if what’s wanted or

what’s truly being sought is yet another

botched cesarean birth or intersection of evolution.

Nothing never happens, but out of curiosity,

if and when you firmly place your feet down

to touch soft earth (or a resolution),

do you also wonder if this [this] is worth being?

Continuing to be the pod amongst barrels

(over & over & under),

allowed to prolong behavior that’s non-conducive

when we finally go about noting

where the base flattens all other shifts.

Where the apology should begin is always in asking how

the ignition disappears in the understanding

of what you’re doing or not doing; in feeling

what you want to express creatively while it’s held

remarkably in a webwork of words or wordless in webbing.

­

I should be giving everyone I see a hand shake or high-five,

wishing I could put a rope around this moment

or the ripcord around my own throat.