Don’t you want to take a hatchet to it sometimes,
when the whole world becomes a patchwork
of itches, your brain’s scruffiness unbearable,
the mangy carpets, paint shedding like dandruff,
and it becomes clear that despite years of pledging
to pick up the pace, take shorter lunch breaks,
the scabby scaffolding is permanent, that just
as you’re hanging red and green curtains
in the Lebanese history room, the World War 1 floor
craters despite the good joists your history teacher
put there, and now all you can make out is a body-
smashed window and an arched doorway inscribed F.F.,
but you know Friar Fuck was a Sex and the City character
and definitely not an archduke, whatever that even is,
and now you’re picturing a duke doing a backbend
while your history teacher cries into his green tea,
which you remember he drank most mornings
before he rolled up his sleeves, revealing
his forearms’ tectonic musculature,
his verve revving you like a squirt of sun.
Is that when it started, this problem of attention
cantering off in the wrong direction,
yoking itself to the litany of men
who each take up a whole fucking room,
while you are trying to learn something true
about the world, trawling for insight through articles
that pitch into landfills of dollar-store hypotheses,
of which you’ve got plenty gunking up your bar cart,
the berms of your bookshelves, even the stairs.
You can’t go anywhere without stepping on a gimcrack
notion, some of which look like dandelions
but when you claw through the carpet, there’s no root,
just a shred of ribbon from a long-shelved gift.
Can you still hear the cry of delight that shot
into the rafters when you opened the small
black telescope, and again when you pointed it
to the sky, and asked how? And why?
