SOCIAL STUDIES
Pt. 1
*
All my friends
are so depressed.
And I’m the other thing
they have in common.
*
I trust charisma
in none of its forms.
*
I would never have considered
that I was an asshole
if people hadn’t kept telling me
that I was an asshole.
For that, perhaps,
I am grateful.
*
In the end, we all become
whoever was nice to us
when we were fifteen.
*
All my friends hate
small talk. But me,
good God, I love it.
That hesitant tango,
its electric potentials.
How a gesture,
barely there,
could become the fulcrum
on which the everything
between us wobbles.
With someone who loves you,
there’s nothing at stake.
The talk can not
get small enough
for me.
*
The final frontier
is another person.
*
It is narcissism, I suppose,
to see so many ghosts.
Just because I miss them
doesn’t mean they’re dead.
*
To all my pseudo-friends,
my semi-friends,
the friends with one foot
out the door:
Keep up the act.
It’s working wonders
in ways you can’t imagine.
*
Pt. 2
*
Secret deals are made
on the fire escape.
*
I wish I had a tag
that said, “I’m sick”
and I wish I had a tag
that said, “I’m healthy”
and I wish these tags were sacred
to all you comely minglers.
*
Don’t bring up dictators.
Nobody wants to talk about dictators.
There is no such thing
as a “fun fact” about Stalin.
*
I am too old and disordered
for these marathon drugs.
I sicken too easily.
I am half a life away
from waking on the hardwood
of people who hate me.
*
My least favorite sound
is everyone else sleeping.
*
I am willing to make
so many concessions.
But yes, it would kill me
to put some gel in my hair.
Shoes are for walking.
What good is a pair
I can’t get dirty?
It took me decades to learn
I don’t have to be beautiful.
God forbid
I forget that now.
*
In retrospect, much
of what I blamed
on my T-shirts
was, after all,
my torso’s fault.
*
If the ten people in this room
were the last alive on earth,
eight of us would drink
deep and dance close
and the two remaining wallflowers
would disappear early,
the last of our kind
in separate apartments.
This poem was originally published in Issue 15 of Grist,