STAID LIFE

by Kyrsten Bean

I’m hungry for more
than a without life can prescribe me
I’ve lost hope of finding any relief in copacetic substances
years I’ve spent, slowly stacking the Lego pieces of my pillaged
nervous system back together, I’m
left to wander these slum flats, little box houses slung below the
hilltops, pieces of paradise sorted only amongst those who live on the
very tip-top--they drink, clink, clinking their little crystal
glasses, I fancy they have nary a care, drink as they wish, snort
lines of white rails, grow wings and flit up banisters to tuck in
their angel-faced kids
whose colleges are already paid for. But what do I know
I’m a former pill junkie, bereft of pills, left with the pick-pocked
face of age,
whittled-down rage, a spent carcass lost in a staid life, pointing my
finger up, up, up,
shaking it ineffectually,
still begging for change.