Where I Never Knew I Always Wanted to Be

by Dan Raphael

when a one-night stand turns into a week-long eclipse
I want to get delivered but can’t afford to be sent that far
can’t get through customs when I barely understand manners

emulate, simulate, don’t be late, clean your plate
whether inner or inter state, the letters naming here
are too large to read, too many drones crashing
when they try to enter the hive

I thought I felt at home but my eyes were closed
and the other side of the wall was vacuuming
I could barely retreat, the room so full of excess material
looking for a place they’d be fed but most of
what I‘ve never needed everyone already has

I’m in a committee for the uncommitted, attending in absentia
the zoom meetings take an hour just to read the minutes
my phone is filling in for me, lying like a president, speaking in circles
that turn into tire chains repurposed as capitalist memes
cause snow depend less on temperature than who Gaia wants to message
though my ears need to be recharged before the second word gets here

too close to see, too foreign to not wonder what it would do with me
once the world stop jerking around I’ll begin my errands
delivering just by showing up, taking even when someone’s watching
a thin man in baggy clothes with many pockets

the morning meal could be called break-dream, too sudden a transition
when caffeine stops taking me in, when the only way to break an egg
is squeeze it in my fist, giving myself a high five and a hairshine at once
one of these nights a mattress somewhere will invent teleportation,
or a waterbed could become a womb and I’d wake up reborn

last night a dream had me, this morning my teeth brushed themselves
my mirrors couldn’t decide who I was, I’d forgotten that stairways
don’t guarantee doors, that just because the clothes fit
doesn’t mean they’re mine, or that anyone would believe they were
I look like I’m waiting in line, even walking across an empty parking lot
where 50,000 square feet of abandoned retail is holding its breath
to be inaccessible a century or so, like a book in a language
no one’s woken up speaking fluently

am I here yet, the only one no one met, my ID’s still in a cocoon
my passport’s waiting for my native land to reappear from some hostile element
and all us unconscious refugees will sell all we can get our hands on
for that one-way ticket to where no one remembers ever being
a location not expressible in numbers, a family large enough
to have and know a bit of everything