Heart-pinched by guilt,
when I remember all the time
I’ve spent in the bathroom,
reading uninteresting magazines, shampoo bottle backs,
and other informational detritus gathered arm’s length
around the commode (a name faintly glorious,
like a decommissioned battleship). Shitting,
because my body both craves coffee
and, is immediately intolerant of it. Or,
making faces in the mirror, or simply staring
into my own eyes, as if to find the person
who should be staring back at me
from behind those dull blue lenses.
If life is counted by how time is spent,
then time wasted is wasted life.
My life-time is spent or wasted
whipped by antagonistic winds
waiting for trains in North Philly.
Then, sitting on said trains
gazing at a landscape either blighted
or ruined but beautiful. Those of us
who grew up in industrial cities, see the beauty
in acres of abandoned factories.
Not the tragic kind in which dandelions sprout
in asphalt cracks or spray-paint spaghetti
clings to soot-darkened walls.
But majestic beauty of what once was,
now represented in decay. The beauty of lives
spent making good wages, living in row-homes,
and Saturdays on stoops
chatting with neighbors–the blue collar happiness
that our parents and grandparents speak of,
of which, like all history, we yearn for,
but don’t entirely believe existed.
My time is thrown away on all sorts of
meaningless pursuits, for knowledge, money,
chemical elations, orgasms, money, money.
At twenty-something, the almost unbearable truth
is all the money I make is for someone else.
In fact, the majority I never actually see,
it’s only numbers written on atm screens,
theoretical dollars I don’t believe in.
Dollars long off the gold standard but trusting in God.
One hopes the trust is mutual. Perhaps,
it’s time we made another covenant,
but God isn’t so litigious these days,
though wrathful as ever. Perhaps,
God really is black and has therefore lost faith
in the legal system. I haven’t seen a rainbow
for quite some time–wasn’t that God’s notary stamp
to Noah? “No more floods, I promise,
but I’ma smote the shit out of somebody.”
Who needs God anyhow? I cope. I drink.
I watch PBS and feel a little bit good about it.
I used to measure my history
by relationships, then employment. Now, I don’t
even count the seconds,
which is better I think.
***
Seth Steinbacher is an obscure nobody with great literary aspirations living in Philadelphia, PA.
