i keep thinking it’s tomorrow
when it’s today,
and i keep wanting to sleep in
when i need to be on the way,
but perhaps i will be right,
you know,
one of these days,
though perhaps that’s something to be afraid of,
since the burden of being right
means only one thing,
whereas being wrong can mean so many different ways
of looking at the world
i drove past a methodist church
the other day,
and their sign said that ‘inflation had not changed
the price of salvation’,
though when i went to church as a kid,
no one ever really clarified that there was
a price to be paid at all
self-help books make me nauseous,
but that might also be because
i don’t know how to help myself,
without tearing things down first,
though it’s not as destructive as it sounds,
since it’s mostly me in a dark room
on my laptop writing mean things to strangers
half-way across the world, or maybe down the street,
i don’t know,
in the glow a neutral blue light burning
my corneas out of their socket
Fred Aiken Writing 