Here's the Trick

Chat with stars re night	
and Lucifer on the deaths	
of friends
and carpeted stairways
on their foyers,
then spar jokingly with God
on the ill-kempt details,
your old man on
the evils of job-seeking
and yes,
be languid as a dog
on a hot and deepening day.

It's not so hard
to triumph over
the meaning of all life
when you can stare
long-term into
the perilous blue eyes
of lakes or Jenny
and maybe lazily fish
the even lazier river
or scour abandoned rail yards,
hoping to find nothing.

This is what you're left with
after the impossibilities die down...
you in your bones, your flesh,
humming along to the radiator.
Your brain didn't sell on Ebay.
Your heart's needle is stuck on 5.
Existence is in mothballs.
Only moths need apply.

—John Grey

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