This Debt

Once I surfed a swarm of bees
as they flew through peach trees,
a syncopating crash of apostrophes
among the plumpest promises
of flavor and life to come.

Today, I watched TV
same way I always did
when sick with the flu.
Gravity grabs the torso,
hugs my body down,
sailor lost to the sea,
careless nomad into sand,
daydreams gone for good,
as I crush the couch pillows

The only thing I have left
is my history, I guess.
Ballfield ridicule. The time
I got the shit kicked out of me
for flicking a cigarette into an alley.
Writing tech manuals for 37 years.
Ecstatic catapaults into the ether
launched off wine and bedsprings.

And my great, grand folly rests
on a back bedroom closet shelf,
my reverse of Shakespeare:
A prideful PTA President
mistakes a bartender
for a charter school guru,
and the fun ensues. No king,
no queens, but high word play,
collisions of meaning, mirrors,
mistakes. And so I proved failure,
maybe to glimpse the piper's path.
Or maybe playwrights are bacteria,
excreting bubbles of hope
like it was an element
on the periodic table.

Ah, well, it is time to disassemble.
Small wounds fail to heal.
My left ear can't hear right.
A leg throws itself out down stairs,
seizing upon a parade march
kind of style without permission.
And fatigue drapes the hours.

It is not enough
to have been young once.
We share a debt for being awake.
I didn't pay it.