Michael T. Martin

oh I don’t create

I just dictate

the thoughts

that superciliously

come into my mind

when the traffic is 

at a standstill

and my feet are rushing below—

blue and anxious rivers,

while my body,

prostrate,

peers over the edge

of some west virginia bridge

into the deepest gorge in

these united states where

bases jumpers, with blindness to all

except the sun, 

hurl themselves over

solely for the rush that they get 

as they see it all below

slashing through igneous and 

metamorphic and sedimentary rocks

that I learned about in ninth grade

science class with ms scavo

who was a really a large woman 

who disliked me because 

I disliked what she loved

but I didn’t just dislike it

I was contemptuous of it because

I knew I would never understand the

importance of rocks

outside of their utility

of throwing them through windows

of sleeping cul de sac houses

that I grew up in and around

and was contemptuous of.

I was a contemptuous child apparently

who,

instead of working hard to understand the

relationships between rocks and the billions of

years of earth

and the relationships between cul de sac houses

and settling for happiness

I destroyed the 

matter of all of these thoughts

and selfishly claimed their opposites

as my passion.

but matter cannot be created or destroyed;

rule something-or-other of science

so said ms scavo

and I, 

that day,

must have listened.