In which I procrastinate on sending out poetry

I write good shit, because that’s what I like to do.

I like it when people read my shit, I like it a lot.

But this whole be-a-commercial-success thing, I dunno.

I’m a bit like Emily Dickinson in that I struggle with the outside world.

I grew up under benevolent eyes. I was almost good enough.

My father got me two kinds of gifts for Christmas–

classical music CDs from the discount bin

and a book that would help me with a school project.

Maybe it’s why I can’t stop dreaming about college.

It’s the same dream every time.

I’m going through those 4 years, again.

Yes, I got my degree.  But I’m getting it again.

Because I didn’t absorb it the first time.

Because I dared care about other things the first time–

My pleasures, my toxic relationships,

a new magic I was trying to use as it was using me–

I wrestled with entities separate from books and ideas.

I word-vomited banal generalities for all my papers,

got a lot of C-’s. But showed up enough 

to stretch zombified fingers across the border of B-.

And that means, in my comfortable shame, 

that I wasted my education.

But midway through every dream I look at the calendar

and realize I need to be at work.

That I don’t need validation as long as I have money,

which I am now earning on my own.

And I wake up in a world far less stimulating.

No Old Testament Literature, no French,

no Psychology 305.

Just a freezing dark room, a harsh lamp, 

a podcast about a world I can’t change,

and a pair of legs that will start working soon enough.