I'll admit, I could roar along to 80's love ballads cruising through dark mountainsides in the back of someone's pickup truck, I would primp and purse in satin fashion that was the heart of the seventies. I'd fit right in the 60's, fawning over lead singer of the Kinks drinking out of glass bottle of coked up sprite. all of it is so wonderful, but I know it's just certain pieces of it that appeal to me, and being in the farthest point ahead in time I can take what I want from those eras. I'd never feel I belong there fully, just like I don't know.

Something is missing, the rise and fall of a generation of names not spoken yet, empires and rubble of lands mapped line over line. I'm missing something. Something we're supposed to know, like you could walk up to anyone in the street and talk about, something that we could be doing, that you and that person in the street could make plans for. I feel like I was born too early. All the important and wondrous things life has to offer, how much of it isn't even ready to be on our plates yet? it's for another time, in the future.

And because I was born too early, I'm going to die too early too. Slipping away to heaven or nowhere at all, the world has waited all this time to save its greatest surprises and cosmic splendors of secrets us primitive people died to get a whisper of, and spill it out in a blaze of golden ages. Maybe, even worse, I'll be an old and distilled spirit as I watch the generation that was supposed to be mine born. I'll get the tiniest glimpse of my own personal paradise, that given the rights years I could have conquered everything our sultry universe had to hide, and I must close the curtains. Go back to bed.

Only I am counting

Ten fingers on two hands

The trick is to count three times over

For every star in the nebulous bands

For every pin in the velvet blanket, polar to polar

So you don't miss a single or six

Since it happens in the millions

Especially once you get to the trillions

Not a single mistake I've made since mars

Traipsing through milky heavens, near and far

Easy as it sounds

Thinly I could miss these things

Thousands to thirteen can hide behind a sulfuric sphere

Fourteen disguised and swim through Saturn's rings

Fifteen years it's taken me to count something so plenty, but I am the only one here.

I was laying down on my side, my lights on in the middle of the night scrolling through my phone. Someone posts a video of the rain falling down among the cypress in hushed tones. Captioned, "I hate being in the rain."

I look at my window, and thinly veiled behind a baroque curtain my blinds are shut tight, and there's nothing beyond that sepia image. I wished I had went outside today. I wanted to, dreamed to. I never did, I took naps all day, and after each one I was even more tired.

I remember what being caught in the rain felt like. I loved it, and there was nothing I wanted to do more. It's been a long time since I've been outside. I'm never in the right situation to catch the rain, I have to listen to it patter down the windows as I work, as I sleep. Even if I looked outside my window its dark outside. Maybe if I forgot to wear a coat, it would catch me. The sky would thunder, seeing my vulnerable state, and gets me when I least expect it. I'd be surprised, and smiling I'd say "oh, not again."

I want to make an appeal

i've been advised this plea is ideal

I'll admit I cried

so don't come around saying I lied

Olive bit my heel

I'd given the winter air a feel

it bit me through me like a meal

much like Olive did on that day

but I'm letting my attention stray

I don't remember how we got that way

she had a big mouth she'd use to say

but she put it to use, on my heel

was I supposed to let the blood congeal?

take my bread and hope I heal?

Iv'e drunk that sacred wine

I've sang to sunday's divine

the blood that runs good here is mine

but I would not be victim to that swine

she's nothing but a spineless eel

I'm just trying to explain the ordeal

I'll answer questions after I reveal

my story in full

from deck to hull

not a word will be null

I swear on my soul

all is the truth I've told

that is this, Olive bit my heel

oh the position I'm in

she wants to tear my reputation to ruin

put me under lillies

it's as if I were achilles

and that arrow of spite never pities

a snake dressed in frillies

it's not impossible really

but our position was quite silly

I'd say her teeth started to sink in

when I kicked her teeth in