A Letter to the Self

You left romance on a curb
next to a copy of Byron
years ago—

soft rain trickles on the pages
of your imagination like Sara
Teasdale’s life amongst the ether.

You are so concerned with
the mind, its cage, that you
resorted to nonsense, irrational,
illogical pathos—

that blur of the subconscious
that so often holds you, bruises
you like an empty sky, like
a bottle cap, red, lost,

you burn.

A cruel joke the mind is—
you were supposed to
transcend into the Great
Thanatopsis, not ride
the elevator back down
to the ground floor.

You know that like God’s
smoke, you’ll rise again,
and neither will keep up
in their horse and buggy
mindsets, so simple,

so simple.

You are always alone,

and nonreality has become
a misshapen model of your
digression—

you rise, you digress.

And you made it up, I’ll say—
inside of your head like
a Mad Girl’s Love Song.

Your dirty subconscious merged
a depiction of childhood television
fancies and Disney movies—
fairy tales to pacify the masses.

God, you love a fairy tale.

I was thinking that you could
travel through fairy tales—
through big cities of pollutant
love, through cathedrals lost
in ruins, through plastic lust—

your subconscious prodigy
emerging from dust,

but like earth, you’ll burn.