Scrid
If magic doesn’t basements flood.
Avoid attaching,
warns my therapist,
when I predict flooding.
Instead, observe
your thoughts
which are like clouds, no?
In an exaggerated
Maine accent, she says,
“If you don’t like the weather, wait ten minutes.”
*
My thoughts have a voice that is not mine,
a gravelly baritone, a man married to his pipe
who lobsters through Maine winters.
Sometimes, on the water, says the voice of my thoughts
that is not my voice but are my thoughts,
You’re pulling pots in a spot of sun, when all around you, rain.
*
My thoughts can turn on a dime,
unlike opinions,
I tell my therapist,
who has a sweet face
and swears her grown kids love her.
*
One out of five children is hungry, my thoughts say at dinner,
clearly not fucking around since I’m sawing into a bloody ribeye.
And many homeless adults are kids who aged out of foster care
- don’t let that steak get cold.
*
Guns are the leading cause of death in children,
mention my thoughts in response to getting stuck
behind a school bus.
*
Some thoughts do not have the fisherman’s voice.
Some are like a flash of coral,
male cardinal at the feeder,
everyone who glimpsed him now
thinking they can talk to the dead.
*
I wake every night at 2am,
a bullet between my teeth.
Don’t clench! says the dentist,
as the needle sinks into my cheek.
Or consider this $600 mouthguard
that your insurance will never cover
and you will never wear.
*
The dentist drills while Bob Dylan plays from a tinny speaker.
My thoughts suggest Dylan was a bit of an asshole,
too busy eclipsing the sun
to wash his pants.
*
Everything’s frozen solid today
but will climb into the 60’s and hover.
Unnatural for February,
snowmelt flooding basements.
But don’t worry.
Think about how good
the sun will feel on your sallow skin.
Seize the spoils of war!
*
We’re just prefab houses, I tell my therapist,
dropped on crumbling soil,
manufactured following the accepted custom
of planned obsolescence.
*
I picture the windburnt man
who vocalizes my thoughts
removing his vinyl gloves,
tamping tobacco into his pipe,
hunched against the wind.
I see a wave coming,
he says, adjusting his oilers.
It’s ‘uge.
*
Shut up, watch.
Stay curious.
Inhale to the count of five,
exhale to the count of five.
Hold the pause in between,
the tiny point of stillness
where everything stops
and nothing suffers.
*
My thoughts with the voice
that is not my own pulls a warm
hand through a rimy beard, says,
Sometimes you pull pots
under a single, livid cloud
when everywhere else, sun.