prince rupert's drops

oh, fuck, i'm so full of love it's spilling out of me

like bullet wounds, like i've been court martialed,

like i'm the pinpoint of a broken sheet of glass,

the part from which everything else shatters;

of course i'm the centre of the universe,

who else would be? who else could love this way,

fierce and terrible and hating? who else other than me

could break the universe for another chance at hello

or at two thousand and nineteen?

which isn't to say i'm manic. which isn't to say

that i don't cry in the shower and scream in the car.

i do. but when i do, i'm the main event;

nobody booked tickets to see anybody but me here.

don't kid yourself, world. don't make me laugh.

don't act like everything is okay when i'm breaking the baby-bird bones

of my fingers every time someone else talks.

me, the human stress ball.

me, twenty stories tall and universe-filled with love,

nothing else can even come close. i'm fucking godzilla,

i'm interplanetary, i'm that giant fucking marshmallow man

from ghostbusters getting shot at by the heroes.

maybe there's just too much of me to love the way i need

to be loved; completely, obsessively, like an illness.

oh, god, i want to be loved like i'm sick.

not just another hospital bed but the whole damn ward

all for me. all eyes on me. nobody looking anywhere but me

and oh, please, i'm fine, really,

i don't need all this attention.

like i'm daring the world to divert it away.

a birthday list of gifts:

- a fifth of whiskey

- a gun with one bullet

- the attention that people get from the crowd below before they jump off a building

i don't think i'm asking for too much here.

i feel like i'm one of those unlucky bastards born on christmas day

who get half the presents for twice the occasion.

how cruel must god be to birth me anywhere but eden,

into a world where other people exist,

where we have jobs and say hello to store cashiers and divide up our attention like slices of mandarin.

so where's this revolution i ordered?

where are the people making me important?

i need a cause to lead and a muzzle for my heart,

and i'll burn on and out,

not like a star, but like the end of the fucking universe itself.

and here i am, acting like i matter

when i really only want to matter to you.

i don't care how you want me to revolve

as long as i'm a lone moon. as long as the tides

are all mine; see, it's a lot more complex

than me playing easy villain or anti hero. it's not

been about me this entire time.

but i can't write poems about any other subject.

December 2020