Some Dark Arc

here in the middle of my life it occurs to me

this would be a convenient time for it to end, the arc

has reached a nice conclusion: born, celebrated, fallen.

it would save the trouble of rebuilding anything

and only a few children, i suppose, would really notice

how this degenerate they did not know as such

no longer haunted earth. otherwise, i guess

a parent or two, some siblings, a few clueless friends

would sometimes pause and grieve a minute before

shrugging on. you could see a therapist, they’d say

if i explained the convenient situation to them: as if

reframing, as if tricking myself, were change.

no, maybe i should anyway. but laying things out

here on the table, as it were, like a surgeon’s tools

i sneer at the lack: of sex, of company, of community,

of purpose, of meaning, of plans, of hope.




“what the fuck,” he whispers and climbs

over the banister very conveniently




in an imagination, which perhaps counts

as suicidal ideation—you could see a therapist,

i tell myself, but instead i light a cigarette

and gird my loins. be a man, watch the kids,

laugh like none of this is starving or suffocating me

here in the middle of my life, which is the end

of some dark arc.