Margin Man

 

(inspired by the Grayson Cox piece above)

 

 

This could be anywhere

And you could be anyone.

Snapped back

To a tarmac trap

Of worming vermin

And wonky washouts.

And did somebody mention sobriety?

Ha.

 

Halloween only felt like the end of the world

But then the fourth of July

The sky so low

And America

Pressed down in the rain,

Six years into an eight-year hex –

A nation of tonguetalkers, bluetoothers

And Generation Yo.

And did somebody mention a cosmic Christ?

Blown away by the bunkerblasters of

Dingbat theocrats.

 

And rivers make borders

And mountains make margins

Where GPS can find you

Where NSA can find you

Where SIN can find you

But where you can’t even find yourself.

Margin Man.

 

Who’s always tipping and never falling

Always inching and but never gaining

Always tempting fate

Then back to this place –

An ancient eel in an ancient lake,

Circling, and always the mountains

Encircling,

This borough of borrowed beds

Bouncing between the aging appleskins of

Women in negative.

 

It’s the feast or famine

Of those four-letter words,

The lauded “L” and the leprous “F”

– Or is it the other way round – I’ve found

They’re linked murkily, in any case,

By the magic of alcohol.

So pick your poison.

 

And did somebody mention escapism?

Whoa.

 

Always shambolic

Sometimes shitfaced

Never far from disgrace

Long in the face on Long Island

Iced teas,

Teased by the stripped screw

Of pornography and

Feeling something actual

Only rarely.

 

Behind chainlink fences, walls where

Someone has sprainted

“Neckface”

Which surely means that something is missing

Or misplaced

And it surely could be you

And this could be anywhere and

You surely could be anyone.

Wow.

 

Time masticated

Mastery mitigated

Fortune fumigated.

What?

 

And always one too many

If only to try to recreate

That never-night

Of stunning and ludicrous amalgamation

For which you press onward again

Far beyond midnight’s bright star.

 

Baby, you once were tiny talisman

Taken home from hospital,

Loved terribly by two

Who where

When

Did they give you up as lost

How and why,

Have you drifted from far and wide

To this place you always are,

Even when you’re not.

This place you always are

This place of rubbled thought.

 

From talisman to margin man and not too young anymore

To be tethered so tightly

To this middling, piddling, slow-paddle place

Of mountainous margins.

 

So pick your poison.