Average American
“The journey toward the run-of-the-mill has never been so remarkable.”
—Newsweek
I fell in love with the Average American:
Joe Six-Pack/John Doe/Homer Simpson/Joe Shmoe
Heels worn down, work-pants ripped
He slipped into the bourgeois existence
with little or no resistance from me
Women’s intuition, written in chalk
underlined and then erased
Defaced, negotiated as reason
This offense will be named Heart-Treason
The Defendant shall rise and then fall
Rise and then Fall
I fell for it all
The Jesse James goatee and Buddha belly
The Man in the Street, wearing shorts at night
The “more than one fight”
that broke and broke and broke his nose
The repose of the threadbare
The utter lack of self-care
The gold-filled crown of oblivion
The Heavyweight-Lightweight
two-year-date with an undisputed non-champ–
a Lava Lamp with no incandescence
I fell for his misunderstood essence;
his fear of having nowhere to land
I gave him my hand and said, “Here, hold this..
Hold me, I’m Here”
Anything to reinforce the core belief
that my presence and attention to those in need
is foolproof, human First Aid
the big Band-Aid
And I confess
to becoming Loretta Lynn in a torn lace dress
on her knees, pleasing her sociopathic prince:
A middle-aged slacker with no self-worth, no self-esteem
the ever-changing, dismantled dream
Sleeping, overeating, smoking, drinking
24-hour-TV watching and partyin’
Partyin’ with no “g”—Mellow and dizzy
like a college student on a front lawn couch
like a low-budge slouch on that show, Intervention
and what I fell so hard for was of my own invention
Clearly, of my own invention
It is my own radiant heat and rapid heartbeat
that seem to magnetize me to the Cold and Hungry
This was high desert, gutter snipe, puppy mill style
And I was duped and fleeced but just for a little while
I submitted to the pull, the velocity of grief
seeking revival and relief from all that had gone numb
He was the Rum and Coke of Love
Above his bed, lithos of uncharted peaks–snowboard art
His desk, in part, ashes and butts, half-smoked joints
and a fake, flameless candle
And he, with make-believe, minor chords of intimacy
his misery index and lengthy sex without technique
would reek from American Spirits and skunk
I fell for a fast-food, reality-show punk;
a rapper’s rope chain, worn in, without the bling
Finger Lickin’ Good, Where’s the Beef, Wake Up With the King
I fell for reasons I have yet to comprehend
but the Skid-Row fairytale has finally ended;
the free-loading swindler, kicked to the curb
where he lay in wait in a Westside suburb
for the next money-bags to bail him out
No doubt, what should have been a one-night, emotion-free fuck
was instead, 700 days of bad luck (and then some)
A-Bum-With-An-Agenda, at once scheming and mundane
leaving a mile-high mess of wasteful remains
until Wednesday, Trash Day
Average American, big screen and a remote
A hoodie instead of a proper coat
An unmade bed,
the mush of Memory Foam
All of this, all of it
to procrastinate the inevitable,
my learning to sleep Alone.
The Los Angeles Press 