*

​

All my friends
are so depressed.

And I’m the other thing 
they have in common.

​

    *

​

In retrospect, much 
of what I blamed 
on my t-shirts

was, after all,
my torso’s fault.

​

*

​

I trust charisma
in none of its forms.

​

    *

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.

​

    *

​

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,
with its many tender 
and dreadful potentials. 

​

How a gesture, 
          barely there, 
could become the fulcrum 
          on which the everything
between us wobbles.

​

The talk can not
get small enough
          for me. 

​

*

​

Secret deals are made
on the fire escape.

​

    *

​

The final frontier
is another person.

​

    *

​

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.

​

    *

​

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.

​

    *

​

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. 

​

    *

​

It is narcissism, I suppose, 
to see so many ghosts.

​

Just because I miss them
doesn’t mean they’re dead.

​

    *

​

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.

​

    *

​

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.
 

This poem was originally published in Issue 15 of Grist,