a poem I found while doing research on my eng comp essay...

It is by a fellow named: C. Bryan Hunter

The Modern Skull

A man with keys is eating an onion

like an apple, the others shovel documents

into a wood stove. Tonight a pickup

hauling a bed full of razor wire is fishtailing.

The world has always been wrong.

Even as an atheist I caught myself

today hoping hell exists.

If you remember hard enough,

as a child, a stranger handed you

a wadded length of rope.

I sometimes want to escape my empathy

like Phineus Gage. If like him, a railroad explosion

blew a rod through my skull and I staggered away

with all of my brain except a conscience

I could lie on my cot smiling at memories

of fire, graves, and the laminar flow of families

running across fields. Lying in my cot

I could hold a bottle of chocolate syrup

overhead and catch the lassos in my mouth.

I could know that putting my hand in a drill press

isn't the thing to do. I could be just as amazed

with the world, but without the sickness

of Boolean logic. Evil or evil.

Good and good. Good not and evil.

I wish at least I could feel the joy.

I tell you these things, my girlfriend,

because lives aren't long enough to be satisfying.

Sometimes when we are in flannel and sleeping

I wake up as jittery as a junkie.

I imagine machines I should be building.

I feel idle. I should be standing before the stove

studying the fractals of steam

rolling out of the tea kettle

or dragging a plow through the garden

in the night air to null the losses.

Tonight my neighbor is showering.

Our walls are thin. In her little tile echo chamber

she is moaning. She is alone. I can imagine myself

with fur breeches storming across a tundra

bellowing for god to just try and fuck me up.

I can imagine myself lying on a bed, whining

for you, dear, to get the lotion,

that your hands are rubbing me raw.

If life seems cold and lonesome

or sunny and brisk or luridly complex,

I would have to agree with you.

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