Think about a thing worth thinking about
and travel into your mind,
where you’ll find some wants and needs
and little else but worthless rhymes.
My head is on your shoulder.
No, my heart is on your sleeve,
racking up a sort of mystical fight
just like David and his giant,
named to show how big he could be
if ever there was a light on
to show everyone what he’s made of.
Still, he loses every time he’s read,
a pebble to the face could shed
some much needed soul in the clouds.
And David,he’s still around
basking in a victory
now centuries old.
Now sometimes he finds himself
just doing what he’s told
with no rebellion in the fold.
No soldier for the world no more.
No, now he’s wearing thin.
Like a dog he sheds and winces
at the sound of passing airplanes.
Surely one could take his eyes.
Surely one could snap his spine.
Surely the pilot has a plan
to revenge old Goliath.
Maybe now.
Maybe David’s all alone
because he twisted the plot.
No warrior can bear to be forgot.
Even when his memory rots
and shudders from his neighbor’s gardens
that he somehow never noticed.
Funny how we see some things in
different ways as time goes on.
My loveliness is shifty, I suppose.
My kindness has its limits.
My understanding drifts from claim to claim
and I’m not for a minute insipid.
And I haven’t been.
I’m as stable as a mule,
though all roped up and doused in fuel
to be aflame with nervous ticks and
subjective subatomic guilt and
the worry that the ticking clock is
everything to the story.

And I’m not sorry for the way I feel,
the books I read or
the soil I steal to
fashion semi-hydroponic apparatus
I used to grow a little faster.
You’re 32, you say.
Just ask what the fantasy proclaims.
And name yourself as David.
Laugh and scream and say,
“Take me as I am:
“Nothing if not a helpless little man.
“Nothing if not a shame.”
Reach for sorries.
Take the blame.