NPR

BEING CHEERED BY EXCESSIVE CARTOON VIOLENCE

There are days when I don’t think of you.
Take Thursdays. Chances are,
you’ll find me in the attic
diving into the fiberglass with élan
common to certain tribes of Andalusian
knife throwers. Or burning
every Sudoko book I could find
within several miles of your home.
There’s a strange pleasure to be had in incinerating
faddish puzzles. Or loaves
of whole wheat bread still
in their organic plastic sleeves.
The experience can be nauseating
without enough sleep,
so I’ve been taking a lot of power naps.
Thursdays wear me out
so you see how I rarely think of you.
Or how some nights you would say my name
in your sleep. How I never
in all our time together told you this
because I feared you’d stop
more than I fear this
experimental immolation coming up on Monday.
Could go either way.
There’s not a lot of literature
on really getting it right.
Which is why I’m doing it
in the parking lot of the nursing home.
If it starts to look bad,
I’ll have nurses in comfortable shoes nearby.
I’ve thought a lot about this,
planned it out to the point
violent waves of clarity will seize me for a day.
And sometimes two,
if I haven’t been to the gym in a while.
So that’s Thursdays and Mondays covered up,
I think you’d have to say.
And the rest of the weekdays I keep open
because a Goth club opened
down the street—
where that Chinese place was that we liked.
Saturdays I sleep in
and practice throwing hammers at the moon.
Or at jets whisking by.
Pretending I might hit them is fun but expensive.
And then Sundays:
you remember the fat paper
you would read
and I would cut into neat strips
or pretend to read
or use to get the fireplace going
during those winters of hellish design.
All that orange concentrate.
The jazz we lost our minds wanting to like.
Sundays are hard.