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Finally made it back to Bowery Poetry Club last week after a three year absence. Last open mic of the season. Felt good.

It’s a sobering thing to try and calculate
The exact percentage of time I’ve spent of late
Trying to fill myself up with
Myself
Trying to fill myself up with
Myself

Heading out into the winter of my spirit
Wrapped only in my distractions
While my truest need
Becomes such a whisper

I can’t even hear it

I like bombast
I like subterfuge
I like noise
I like to shout down any ounce of substance

that tries to penetrate
Any ounce of anything
I didn’t orchestrate

I gravitate toward surface
I gravitate toward sheen
I gravitate away
From whatever gravity means

I line my insides with my outsides
I play dress-up

I try on skinny jeans
I try on cigarettes
I try on crossword puzzles
I try on the internet

I try on “Rock of Love with Brett Michaels”
I try on MSNBC
I try on whatever I can buy
To make myself more “me”

I try on too much red meat
I try on too much red wine
I try on snarky dismissive and
“No, no, really, I’m fine”

I hang myself with ornaments
And pray the branches hold
I play Dead Kennedys on the way to my office job
To keep from getting

old

I put in as much as will fit
With little regard
For what I’m getting out of any of it

When I was growing up there were actually channels on the television
That had no content
just static
just space

A hissing, scrambled buzz of nothing
(Or, if not nothing, then
Something close to not-quite-something)

But not now

Now

Every channel is full and multiplied
300-plus points on the dial
Each with its own picture, sound & style

most still static

But structured & groomed & with a target
Demographic

All a fitting metaphor
For a collective human nature that says
Empty is an eyesore

That clamors desperate, loud
For moremoremore
And doesn’t bother to distinguish or define
More of what
Because more itself
Seems to be enough

I have tried
Filling myself up with
Myself

And I have left myself
Unsatisfied

I have tried

Filling myself up with
Myself

And I have left myself
Full of shit

There’s truth out there somewhere
Hidden in the little spaces between
What I want
And what I do

Yes, it’s soft
But not completely out of earshot
If I can keep my mouth shut long enough

Only open
Only empty
Only silent
Only still
Only flushed of what separates
Me from me
Me from God
Me from you

Me from the life I only dare talk about in the abstract

-IMBA

4/08