Goodnight Moon, Goodnight Dorm Room
Goodnight cheap vodka bottles clinking down the trash chute
Goodnight shitty WiFi router buffering til reboot
Goodnight legal weed odor creeping underneath my door
Goodnight fraternity rejects in the lounge, ballistic when the Giants score
Goodnight lack of airflow, goodnight mold in the bathroom
Goodnight forever streetlight glow, goodnight my wonderful, empty womb
Goodnight cafeteria expired milk and wilted romaine
Goodnight Spanish exchange students taking drags in the rain
Goodnight washing machine that floods
Goodnight dryer that never warms up
Goodnight shallow people at the clubs
Goodnight uber vomit clean-up
Goodnight internship hours
Goodnight post-hangover showers
Goodnight plagiarism warnings
Goodnight half-naked mornings
Goodnight bad music through thin walls
Goodnight walking-to-the-bodega catcalls
Goodnight crude drawings strewn across the whiteboard
Goodnight minimum wage and buying shoes I can’t afford
Goodnight RAs breaking up parties on floor five
Goodnight trading antidepressants for a half-descent sex drive
Goodnight Sunday mass that 13 people attend
Goodnight short distance girls and long distance boyfriend
Goodnight waiting on midterm grades
Goodnight LinkedIn updates
Goodnight roadsalt-stained suede
Goodnight messy roommates
Goodnight to the pep rallies my tuition pays for
Goodnight overpriced DayQuil at the convenience store
Goodnight to the acne that just will not clear
Goodnight to all inquiries of my future career
Goodmorning consistently undercooked eggs, made without love
Goodmorning me, Goodmorning. Goodmorning.
Simple Math; Fractions
My face is hot.
Input search:
How to go to stats class when you’re paralyzed
Results:
Call 911 immediately. Sudden paralysis is an emergency.
I get up.
I get up
(bodies on the floors of our classrooms
do not).
Nor those who couldn’t outrun
the wreckage of war we fund
I have half a mind to fake sickness today.
– and I should not scroll on Instagram today
Because the home page kicks off with a Kirk memorial then shrapnel
lodged in the leg, the head, the heart of a another Palestinian
● –Next a dance trend,
● an ad for a “Grow-your-booty” Pilates challenge
● then, back to multilation then a bikini pic
● A Hollywood scandal
● A video of Elon–nearly indiscernible as AI
if he weren’t forcing his tongue down Donald’s throat
● Then a selfie
● Then a selfie
● Then a selfie.
● I’m going crazy.
I have half a mind to disable my account.
And half a mind to start a livestream
And cry
I’m not going to class.
Skeletal people follow me back into my bed.
I dream of one meal a day –if that
flour and water
and when I wake and I eat, I am full and I am empty
I remember:
“Having an armed citizenry comes with a price, and that is part of liberty.”
And there are parents curled into themselves
Screaming tonight
And I am reminded not to find any solace
Because a man has died, (presidentially recognized!)
A man who has rooted for,
hoped for,
prayed to his god for,
the death and dehumanization of
Billions.
And my face is hot.
And I have half a mind to stop trying.
And there is a fear in me
That to write this is to ask for my murder
–a plea
for my grief to be met with a bullet–
This is the American way (at least, after we stole its land)
Violence aimed at conquering violence, ununited we stand
Because freedom is granted or stolen by the hand of a
gunman
But if I lay myself down, who will cry for them then?
Who will cry for the boy: his eyes sunken in
Who will cry for the eighteen-hundred whose bodies were misplaced and their records erased from within
where they were held in custody for having brown skin
And who will fume and who will unravel at the racist masses
That booed when a professor uttered his title
While teachers risk their lives in their classes,
But shame on them for not teaching the Bible
– Politicians, do you too mourn?
Because grave after grave, urn after urn
We finance the obliteration of the lives yet to be lived
I have half a mind to lose faith in it all
Half a mind to buy starbucks
and disregard the casualties this chai latte sponsors
I won’t think of the faces torn from their skulls
I won’t think of the infants never given a chance to touch their own feet to the ground
Before they are nothing but flesh
in a concrete collapse
I have half a mind to
click “don’t show me posts like this again”
I want to turn my head;
want to go on and live.
But they are dead.
Question:
If you subtract the innocent and add some thoughts and prayers, what do you get?
Answer:
I don’t know. I haven’t fulfilled my math requirement yet.
I have half a mind to place a bet on the names within the Epstein files
I have half a mind to buy up and preserve every contraceptive for miles
I have half a mind to erase myself as lawmakers sought
Half a mind to sink your billionaire yacht
Half a mind to be the next Aaron Bushnell
So I can get my mind off my friends in a cell
I have half a mind to force you to see
The crimes of genocide they don’t show on tv
Half a mind to tell you we can’t agree to disagree
on who gets to thrive on and profit from fascist liberties
I have
I have
a whole, still-beating heart
And I have half
a mind
When Our Atoms Stop Dancing
If the smallest bits of matter halted their motion,
closed the gaps between each other,
We could fit upon my finger
8.2 billion people are a sugar cube. 99.99% empty space,
empty bodies,
clinging to empty loves. We are dissolving
in tea and stretching our
legs in earl grey milky ways,
But I am 0.01% of the body you see
and the lover you
seek. So may we be awfully
sweet. Crammed
in 4 grams: 8 billion human
cavities. Finally whole,
but terribly small.
And we learn to live with that.
Because when we feel empty, it's because we fully are.
Add comment