A Prose Poem

Untitled

Listening to ten-year-old music podcasts can inspire melancholia.

This is particularly true when unmoored and far from any cultural shore. Music, technology, habits. When my thoughts drift to freedom, I consider the ethics of gas versus electric, methods for socializing, personal finance. The popularity of fitted shirts inspires minor anxiety. To be a stranger in that strange land! To shroud myself and adhere to wayward genres and write missives to a world that can never understand. To wake at an unseemly hour, meditate and stare into the predawn dark as if in defiance of all that's been done. (Notice I'm not directly blaming.) To return to the town, a nobleman of no rank, a man with dreams, however ostentatiously realistic. A cup of coffee. A splay of fruit on a white ceramic plate. A sunrise.

If this seems like nothing to you, old friend, wait till you get to be my age.