I am tired and this isn’t my bed. This isn’t my head. I am a yawn wrapped in skin. I am dead numb defiant to everything but that sound is keeping me awake. It is the sound of the radio.
I sing every song known to man and every dirge known only to women. I frequent fine altars and coarse temples. My priest serves a sermon of soup and ladles hot acid homily into my eyelids Amen. I drink the Wisdom and it guides me to the wildness. I have committed every crime. I have attempted every faux pas. I have mispronounced every word with thick turgid lips. I am the fog-sharp knife stuck in your stomach. I am the growl of your stomach’s stomach. I am un-ignorable.
I was frozen in fear. I am thawed by anger. I now flow like a thickened stew of revenge and doubt. Tonight we smoke them out. I am Midas and his touch and a heap of dead gold. I am a fascist in the sheets and a follower in the streets; I don’t understand anything in between. Science calls it a “top sheet.” I kick it with disgust to the foot of your bed.
I am a birthday cake without the candles or song. And I take offense to that, even thought I said it. My reflex is self-instinct and hasty manifestos in the fourth person. That’s You squared. I am the bold brusque confusion of an autocorrected thought. I’m a clap-back of a clap-back. I am an all caps missive published at 4am.
I am virtuous and true. I am a smiling cop turning off his body-cam. I am a mid-divorce judge about to change your life. I am a teacher in a chalk-stained blouse. I am the body of a slain black teenager. I am the gum-smacking kid who eats attention for breakfast and the gun-toting kid who chooses vengeance for dessert. I am the gestapo and the French Revolution. I am the armies at sunrise and the sleeping civilians at sunset. I am brooding, duplicitous, wicked, and able. I am 90 million coughing. I am 2 million dead.
I’m ready for a few kind of washing machine. I’m overdue for a vanilla latte. I’m saving up for a new kind of slime. I’m a sea of glass faces, waiting for the van to come. I’m a hot piece of iron, coal fired, and flattened into your skull.
And I’m going to crush it into pieces.
Because I am everything you ever wanted to know. I am an open box. You are a sound-bite glutton and I am the sound of the radio.
Good morning.