Somebody Else's Kind of Sad

Somebody else

Gave me a block of sadness

And told me to live with it

Here you go—

Up onto my plate

Take this

And swallow it down

Ten times the tears

Full up the bucket
And away we go

You get small

You get big

You forget yourself

You forget

A lot of things

Cold hard street

Sidewalk chalk

And a post office box

With no mail in it

You might think

I’m going to be

Park bench surfing

For the rest of my life

But the rest

Ain’t much of a rest

No matter how many pillows

You put on the bench

See, someone like me

I get affected

By the attitudes

Around me

That’s how I wound up

Two brown jackets

And a hat made out of paper

That’s how come

People think

I should be

Locked away

That’s how come

I’m smart

But savage

Dusty and dirty

And divine

Like the good Christ said—

He was a dirty

Motherfucker too

You know

No matter how many halos

They go putting

Around his head

See, a long time ago

I got somebody else’s sadness
Somebody else's
Kind of sad

And I fell down faster

Than the Panama Bridge

Saw so much sky

I almost didn’t get up

You ever hear of a man

Drowning

In his own clouds?

That was me

I was the Ocean King

I was the Saturn Prince

I was the Duke of the Everlasting Universe

And that was a-okay

For today

And every day

But you know…

The pit you get used to

In your chest

Is only accommodated

By your psyche

Not your heart

Not the things in you

That search for space

And love

And understanding

A heart takes up a lot of room

Almost as much as breath

And when you got

That sadness in you

That doesn’t belong

That your soul

Seeks to reject

The bile won’t break down

And the gut won’t ungutter

And the beating blood

That makes you up

Runs dry

And your only choice

Is to take what you’ve been given

And give it

To somebody else

. . . . .

And I wouldn’t do that

So I’ll keep laying on my benches

Sheltering myself

Against the black and gold waves

Hoping it all lifts off me

Thinking I used to be happy

Thinking I used to tell myself jokes

Thinking I never had

To remember

To smile

I just had to remember

To be

And all that

Was enough