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.
