your idea of a good time. (7/22/13)

on a cruise from some accidental civilization to some other

i am hungry

you’re telling me about where you stay, where you drink late into the night

where boys i have never met reach for you and you wake

sad

then try again to find a way way back again into darkness

then get published in The New Yorker speaking foreign languages

but but but i am sad too, i think, but mostly because sadness is familiar

and proof of life.

we are slow bodies delivered every five to seven hours

to ancient cities built in the ecstatic era of late capitalism

when driving was a compulsion against the threat of progress

when distance made sense, like a good idea

like turmeric in everything

we pass exit 10 for newtown/sandy hook

as we will eventually pass exit 11 for newtown drive, which i have never heard of

and then we also pass so many exits that any other exit loses its quality of metaphor

and all places become just another exit off the freeway

i imagine my hunger and am glad for this strange undifferentiated melancholy

i am glad to know one can be sad about everything all at the same time, and that we can talk about this later, like some discuss dinner

i am glad to know one does not necessarily die jumping from a ledge

or that the highest speeds will never end in flight

we are not planes or birds, but sometimes do sail sometimes catapultishly 

and a little while later tell stories of the voyage

so to be glad is another way to gratitude--

which has nothing to do with not being sad

which itself is a distinction i would not have made before meeting you