Practice Talking

I’m still learning how
to talk.
It’s been years now.
Some of my memories go by,
mean cars
passing the entrance ramp
to the expressway,
where part of me
is trying desperately
to merge.
The desperate part.

Somewhere along the line,
at some point,
my brain
wants to make
an example out of me.
My brain is looking
for a scapegoat.

In a research
and development laboratory
upstate New York,
scientists are practicing
firing synthetics
to thirteen-thousand degrees
fahrenheit.
They want to turn garbage
into plasma.

Where I live,
town officials sent helicopters
to patrol the town borders.
They wanted to keep out
alien garbage trucks.
This was during a dumping moratorium
in a neighboring town.
The mounds were so full
people were paid
to identify the geographical
origins of the trash there.

I don’t know how
those South American birds
stand it.
I mean, the termites
erect giant mounds of excrement,
letting off cubic meters
of methane gas.
It’s just so… offensive.

My brain is looking
for a scapegoat.
At some point,
my brain wants to make
an example out of me.

Well, it was a dream,
I was in a diner,
and it was very dark,
and I had died during dinner.
Drown.
And since I was most
familiar with myself,
I had to lead
the dredging expedition.

Later, at the hospital,
the nurses were friends
I haven’t seen
in years,
and they kept coming up to me,
and they were saying,
“Hello,”
and they were asking,
“How are you?”
sort of professionally.

“Hey, listen…
we said we’d call
if we were coming over…
we weren’t coming over,
so we didn’t call…”

In the dream
I’m holding
your wallet in one hand
and the phone
in the other,
and I hear it ring,
and I hear you say,
“Hello,”
and I say,
“I’ve got your wallet.
I’m mailing it back to you.”

You’ll sit and listen,
so why am I telling
you this?
What am I
telling you?
Just what am I
recycling here?

My brain
is looking
for a scapegoat.

My brain
wants to make
an example out of me.