Avocado

Maybe I’ve lost it.

My timid turtle’s head

Pulling back from this and that,

A true master of nothing

But detachment.

 

I do my daily dailies:

Sit-ups,

Downloads,

Jack-offs,

Charge-ups,

Vitamins B and C and D

And a nightcap or three,

At least.

 

At my worst I’m a deadbeat daruma,

Who thinks too much

With one eye forever,

At my best a mighty mote,

Drum and bassing beneath brutal skyline,

Punk rocking in the palpable

Commercialism of the city – dancing to dying music

In a driftwood daze –

My mouth full of secrets

And a skeleton on my chain.

 

Sometimes I think I get it

Sometimes I almost understand.

For example,

An avocado heart,

Tight in my grip,

Is so substantial,

Says it all,

Could provide some kind of focus

To life but too many holes, hips, tits

Wisp by, wraith-like in their distraction.

 

It’s uncouth, I know,

But my imagination is ruthless

In its crudity

And anyway ambition is nothing more than torture

In a sexy wig and ladylips,

Or so I tell myself.

 

Now I’m thirty and so busy

Not making money

And so torn between continents

And other large forces

That I barely stop to notice

That thirty is where the riddles begin,

Thirty’s the scar you never knew you had,

A film of fucked-up feeling

Fronting some future

That I realize for the first time

Won’t necessarily get any better.

 

I’m thirty, with a bad tattoo

Called my twenties matching

The bad tattoo from my twenties,

And I’m just getting started

Going nowhere

Or somewhere, from here

So please lord

I’m asking you, once again,

For ten more years

And the hefty heart

Of a humble avocado.

 

 

———-

Japanese translation key:

Daruma – A Japanese wish doll. Using black ink, one fills in a single eye while thinking of a wish. Should the wish later come true, the second eye is filled in.

 

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