Office by Alex Penny
i’ve been carrying around cash
and ive been getting a lot of
sleep
i ride a bike in the middle of traffic without a second thought.
all my friends are dying.
and my family- they are too.
i am not cathleen virginia marie foisy
maybe i was or maybe i wasn’t
maybe i will be or maybe i wont
but i certainly am not her right now
cathleen virginia marie foisy is willing to live for her job
she wants a dog
and a family and a brand new kitchen floor.
i don’t think i’ve ever even met her
she definitely isn’t me
i have her skin and her hair and maybe even her toenails
but she doesn’t live here.
maybe no one lives here.
lately it sort of feels like no one lives here.
but i know thats not true
because i can still raise my eyebrows
when something offends me
and i can still feel my muscles relax when
that song comes on
wake up to tell me
wake up to show me what i could not find
wake up to tell me
wake up to show me
what i could not
find
im afraid of walking alone at night
not because its dark
and im not
afraid of
people
im afraid it’ll be so quiet
and so peaceful
that i’ll fall asleep in the
grass
and worry people.
im afraid of swimming in the ocean
they taught us to be afraid
of beautiful things like
swimming in the ocean
and now i am terrified
of rip currents.
im afraid that ever since they published anne franks diary
no one has written freely
ever since they published
a little girls thoughts
everyone has been worried,
and there are only safe writters
and only safe poems
because everyone secretly thinks
that they are important enough
to be a victim
that everyone will still be
pretending
to care about
generations from now
and someone will find their
leather bound
carefully dated
carefully written
safely worded
diary
full of hyperbole
and fallacy
and they will be remembered
as tragic.
im afraid of driving cars
two thousand pounds of hot metal
grinding and screeching and roaring
going where it wants to go
staring at you with those big white eyes
dont make me go in there!
im afraid of my friends.
not really, no, im not afraid of my friends
they’re okay.
two hours of sleep,
a shitty cup of coffee:
ready for the day
every nights its
too hard to eat so
i shake the bottle
of sleeping pills
take out four
put two back
then its
bad stand up comedy
and then alarm clocks
and then
chaos
until its night time
repeat
jesus fucking hell
get your christ and your candy
out of my stories
someone send me a list of unrelated words so i can write a poem
we live in a
microwave
society
but as they say in the
old country:
a watched clock never
boils
not over but
no no, not to the left
or the right
you’re not getting it
no, not on the inside either
stop.
the color?
oh, its sort of like the ocean
if you mixed it with lots of cream and sugar
like a steaming cup of coffee
warm like a wool sweater
only not wool
or leather
or
spandex
oh what’s it called
what’s it called
it’s not dark
not dark at all its rather
uh
its rather…
you know
i know you do
its the kind of thing you wish you had with you
when its cold and cloudy like during
a- a- a-
a something
you just want to love it
her! it’s not an it, it’s a her!
and she makes you happy, like
really happy and makes you feel all…
all…
oh what’s the word
the opposite of distant and
rude
and you never want to leave her!
you’d go to the ends of the earth for just one hug!
you’d do anything to make her happy and
when she’s
gone
you feel
oh, whats the word?
more than sadness
more than
grey
it’s sort of like feeling sad and grey at the same time but multiplied by
a million
that’s how it feels when
she’s gone
ive decided to start a new project where i ask people for a list of unrelated words and i will write a poem using that list
im going to post them with the title “as prompted” and write the words in the tags.
one of my poems is being published in my college’s annual magazine and im getting paid for it.
this is something i needed because i havent written anything in a really long time.
