Mature Themes

Some days, weeks maybe, limp along
aimlessly, painfully,
dull and achey filler
between episodes of Law and Order.
Some days I do what I do just to be a doing
because simply being with myself
is unbearable.
Never can there be a silent moment.
My lifeblood is the CD changer,
the jukebox, the monologues to be honed,
arrangements to be learned.
Often it all feels half real
compared to the television,
the idiot box covered for fear of being found out.
Uncovered only for crimes, and deaths,
and missing persons.
Only when it's late enough
no one will notice.
With transparent detectives and
implausible district attorneys on the brain,
I make a home for myself at the bar each night
and find reminders
of what life is actually like,
somehow, underneath the smoke and stench,
the jabber and patter of momentary numbness.
Really, I sit around waiting for season premieres,
for hot new cast members. I sit on my hands waiting
for the new girls, the new paralegals,
the new snitches, the new cadets.
I wait for my heart to stop
at the sight of them,
just for that instant their faces are new
and mysterious and disarming. I wait.
My heart does stop for a moment or two.
I head out to the pub again and again
with some spring in my step,
still with that childish, foolish hope
there will be a face amid the haze and fumes
who gives to me the same sense of
momentary death I got from TNT,
even if only for as long as a commercial break
and only the price of a PBR.

(2004)