Stuckness

Stuckness

I was planning to go outside

this afternoon

but then

I started thinking

about

what California must have been like in the 1920s

before

all of the lime

avocado

and mimosa trees

were plowed

…the fragments of a culture

the fragments of a life

like shards of porcelain

strewn across the bathrooms

Stuckness

as indigenously American as the Western

a crooked November moon

and the sky’s belly

torn open

Stuckness is

like a boxer

who escapes violence through

the violence based on his own work

or an imposingly stocky security officer

shaved head

gray goatee

Stuckness is

its own self-perpetuating logic

Stuckness

is the ultimate representation

of the American dream

communities without fathers

a walk through fire

Stuckness

gaining weight

both physically and mentally

in its current job

Stuckness

with the surety of a guillotine

no discernible enthusiasm

Stuckness

a hermit child

struggling in uneasy proximity

to others

while bounded

by a vast loneliness

The walls of the self

are the burden of every human