It must be Spring.

The begonias are vomiting diesel

Again,

Leaf blowers are whining like scapegoats

Condemned to die

Again

In a swirl

Of garbage and leaves,

And I don’t feel like being alive today.

 

Why must I

Again

Salute the pilfered flag

That just yesterday I glibly waved?

 

Somewhere a monstrous, moody moon

Lingers like a flashlight in an empty street,

Ready to plunge her sequined syringe

Into my unwitting, smoggy veins.

 

Somewhere bird watchers

And gardeners

And beekeepers

Swoon like submissive violins.

 

It must be Spring

Again.

I am choking on the dew.

I am lost in a maze of barbed-wire-wool,

Still cold, lacerated, hemmed in

Again

Like a fiery torment of acid tears

Spilling into a perverse pool

Of my own making,

And I don’t feel like being alive today.

 

Who are you

To assure me

That life is regenerative?

 

Somewhere I know that you are right,

But I don’t care. Not now.

I am an oil derrick

Wheezing night and day;

My demise is bound up in my riches,

And I don’t feel like being alive today.

 

Somewhere it is Fall

And somewhere it is Summer

And somewhere it is Winter

And maybe here it isn’t even Spring:

How quickly, how often the seasons change!

 

I am sober. I’ve never done a drug.

But the begonias are vomiting diesel

Again

And I don’t feel like being alive today.

 

by Andy Posner

Andy Posner is a resident of Dedham, Massachusetts. He grew up in Los Angeles and received his Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Culture from California State University, Northridge. He moved to New England in 2007 to pursue an MA in Environmental Studies at Brown University. While there, he founded Capital Good Fund, a nonprofit that provides small personal loans and financial coaching to low-income residents of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Delaware, and Florida.

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