Worth

(A million things in one month that turned into a poem with some kind of sense,

I think)

When every day is worth Its weight in cigarettes and beer

It’s hard to hear the hope chest cracking open between your ears.

It’s easy to feel the abundance;

Our shoulder-perched buckets fill quickly with every passing year.

Yet, a happy thing surrounds my bones in knowing that you’re still here.

Even if

Here

Is a place where one knows what to do with their arms anymore,

No one knows what to do with their hands.

They sit compiling their daily contributions to destroying our precious land

And it’s inhabitants.

I see our bones seem to find it easier to be against anything than to be for.

Separated from ourselves, one of us sits on a shelf being stored,

But what for?

I see intricate sculptures In your sad expressions worn like a poem,

like a cast.

Appearing familiar rather than sad,

So I ask Are you surviving to survive or to thrive?

Either way it’s not so bad… is it?

Maybe you’d rather not think about it,

But it is so bad,

I’m fed up with the indigestion of it all

I have no reason to name “it”

I know grief is love with no place to go

But i want it to go somewhere.

I want it to be plucked from a shelf and stored someplace far away from me,

That’s why I’ve been busy as a bee re-purposing its pollen,

I’ve been shaking all of my dust off And there’s enough to fill your pockets

But this debris was quickly sent away to somewhere else unseen,

I was only hoping a few good shakes would leave me somewhat clean.

And suddenly

It was mother’s day

For the father in me,

So the daughter in me disappeared

Along with the depression,

Along with the dust.

I went to empty her shoulder weights

Went to shave off bits of rust

Went to show her that I am still here.

Regardless of her own over indulgence in those indigestible vices

Forcing her body and mind into dusty slices

I went to rub her aching body as if she were some other form completely,

Like a helpless baby.

It was clinging to life by a clanking string,

And it’d speak to me,

Occasionally flossing bits of wisdom and light loose from sunbeam teeth.

So I decided to piece together all of these things

And the wisdom that was left with me

Was that worth is not something that we transfer

Worth is something we can only be.