To be totally honest with You,
The life you love isn’t real.
You are a shrimpy gorilla with a brain
Too bloated to believe that you are Who you are:
Arbiter of a grand social order
That spins and wiggles and fusses
And doesn’t really have much to do with anything.
You invented Me,
For Christ’s sake.
No music or art really means anything–
It crosses the wires in that overgrown melon of yours
Until You feel pop rocks in your skull,
Smell the color of shame and see the late American President Franklin D Roosevelt
Sitting on your coffee table,
And none of it’s any realer than an acid trip.
You invented everything,
Got it?
Great.
Now,
You could have lived perfectly well
Eating and shitting,
Fucking and dying,
Because that’s all Your body was really designed to do.
One morning, though,
You discovered the wonders
Of watermelon soap.
You felt how it bubbled in Your armpits,
The way its smell stuck to Your clothes
When You peeled them off before bed.
The girl from class remembered that smell,
And the parts of her that can’t overthink
Really liked You.
And just like that,
You were watching shitty horror movies
And threading your fingers through the loops of her pink rug;
The natural order was finished and suddenly trees
Picked up their feet to demand civil rights
And squirrels unionized against Costco.
And You didn’t find anything particularly strange
About that.
You were perfectly fine with wearing a suit
And sending letters to photosynthetic congressmen
If it meant coming home to a girl
With almond-colored eyes.
Please enjoy the life I never gave You–
It’s arbitrary and unnatural
And wonderful in all the ways
You hoped it would be.
Unceasingly indifferent,
God