Childproof Boxes
You argue with me like we’re underwater;
If I don’t drown you’ll ask me to try harder.
I’m Icarus after on a single kilo
A single night won’t make me any harder.
Eight of us sitting at the hospice waiting
and who are we to make decisions harder.
I’ve got pain pills sitting in my hands, a plan
to make the fall shorter and harder.
It’s clear to me you don’t respect color much
you’ll drink that brown to sleep harder.
I think I’m gay like the bible, for parents
embarrassment is apparently harder.
I listen to my music to shut out the
world—white wire headphones make listening harder.
Bark
I have seen the greatest minds of my generation racked by colored screens,
blinking, chirping, obscene,
disheartened by a market, bear in nature, clawing, dragging and making
bloody the hopes and dreams of home and life,
who sit by idle in their fourth year, waiting, searching, lost,
forever in the confusion that is generation lazy and stupid,
who wade through clouds of smoke in burn tea weekends, sleep late Sundays,
poisoning, scorching and crushing hopeful Mondays,
who are to shy to make love that is not white, embarrassed by percentages,
unfair, unrealistic of the hopes that we have for one another,
who fail to trust, purple and gold bleeding diploma, scattered heads,
useless in the real world they all said,
Spirit nights, destroying, obsessing, sweater and collar wearing but plain clothes
alike, fascinations with up all night, and sleep when dead, and sleep during
class,
who take in this generation’s Benzedrine papers, excuses, test taking, focus,
croaker writing a millenniums worth, fulfilling, repeating,
who wait from Port, to Main, to old 42 and historic Cantrell for lectures,
pouring from generations ago, aging and regurgitating, but not taking,
notating, and failing those generations from years ago.
—
Dave Arbus is a senior Writing & Rhetoric student at James Madison University. In his free time you’ll find him memorizing rap lyrics and practicing his smile. He hopes to one day to join the PGA tour and spend the rest of his life out on the links.
