This life is a life lived gently, modestly,
never a scandal or smudge
because the owner shoves the
claustrophobia, inner cannibalism, termite damage, and
weathered for-rent signs
into the broom closet, dusty and waiting.

I yearn for more, doubting but needing
Unstirred passion still lingers
leaving just cubic zirconium dust
to sift through my fingers.

I am too young too jealous and maybe too weak
to settle
for a tranquil routine.

I want
to fall
to have to take to beg to lust to break to see myself.
Not vicariously, to live.

Instead,
I sink.

Watching screens bright screens brain-death screens
promise screens
reflecting my self-centered world back to me.

It's a pleasing daycare to find myself in
(free of charge, they kill you with laughing gas)
but I have not left yet;
shame and imaginary recriminations drag me down violently,
so I stare
up at the electric fence.

I do not jump.
I do not let myself
fall.

Now that I see the sad, pathetic figure I make
Perhaps
This life is a life lived have-not but have-will.
(Not?)