flat coffee

i used to rule the world

i could push it round with each written line
and my destination would arrive
whenever i did.

the story i wrote
always followed the
protagonist
(who bore a striking
resemblance)
and all the struggles
he faced
(heroically, even
in his doubting moments)-
well, if you skipped
a few pages
you'd see him
surmounting.

if you skipped
even more, to
the back of the book
there was
a guaranteed happy
ending of some sort-
win the war
get the girl
even when tragic
what makes me laugh now
is how comic it all was
predictably meaningful
(oh, so meaningful)
resolutions.

now no one and
nothing
comes when i call
and if sentences make sense
it's because
they are tasteless and flat
and to the degree that they don't
it's because
they approximate truth
("truth")
with no subject-verb agreements
and the tense changing midway and
no one quite getting the point
(particularly me).

so now i sweep
through the dust
arrange it in lines
to gather
or, in a fit,
make clouds
that irritate the passages:

just to get some
kind of reaction.

[so now i sweep
the streets i
used to own]