by Blake Guthrie

Created on: October 20, 2007

-RABBIT EARS-

Did you ever stay inside your apartment
for a month straight
only leaving to get the mail
in your bare feet and boxers

or chips and milk and granola bars
and beer at the corner store
don't forget the paper

only spending $9.50 every 48 hours
sometimes even less

watching the horrible daytime programming
on network TV
(because you couldn't afford cable)
always adjusting your rabbit ears

each time you changed the channel

reading poetry that was beneath you

writing poetry that was beneath you

oh the serpentine glory of
of the non-humanity
to be a mole in your apartment
apart from everyone and everything
for endless days filled with sanguine boredom

apart-
-ment

to not be a part,
to be an outsider from the world
stuck on the inside
with only the world of the soul
and the TV dinner

to not have to answer to anyone but yourself
for thirty glorious days

had you enough dough saved up
you would've done your time between jobs at some
pastoral coastal location with only the sea oats waving in the wind
on the dunes by the sea
as sea gulls squawked
and pelicans flew in a V formation over your head

maybe a stray cat would show up at the cabin door,
meowing so desperately, yet graceful and fierce
and you take it in and it becomes a part of you
takes up a mysterious small portion of your soul
and you are glad for it

to not have to answer to yourself
or anyone else
only to respond
to what the day required without thought of the future

wouldn't that be wonderful?

(especially that part about the cat.)

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