Midnight Poet Strikes Again, FISHING

FISHING

To join the school,

My batting eyes fool:

“Approve and endorse my dire grin!”

Self hatred therein, but wanting an in,

I’ll ingratiate

To dim a hate

With which I’m not sure was there to begin.

Manufacturing “busy,”

blurred over, and dizzy,

I’m sole in a bowl

When I could be whole.

Perching to show that I don’t seem to care,

While I mostly just flounder and gasp for the air.

I long for the day a stranger will bend

And say “Be my friend.”

Like lobster and wine,

all will be fine,

Befitting, and mine.

But I’m swimming upstream against the throng.

My whirlpool’s downward spiral taunt,

Tells me I’m wrong to feel I belong.

Unblest and dry in this baptismal font.

Aggressively waiting the thing I want most,

The catch is deflected because I’m engrossed

With projecting/regretting a pained inner chatter,

Neglecting/forgetting the heart of the matter:

I want you to stay.

But fishing so much takes those chances away.

(If you were this needy, I wouldn’t obey.)

And neither do they.

- Matthew LaBanca, Midnight Poet Strikes Again