to the right of my heart a button °
if you see the button press deeply into me

I am shining brilliantly on my way down the stairs

in 1984 I thought everything existed as light

in 1993 I became obsessed with Shaq and Penny
the Magic whole

in 1957 the idea of me became closer to being

in 2011 I spent a lot of time in a car trying to keep what I love

2003 was a chimpanzee destroying its cage I still live 2003 in my scuttle through 1984 when I turn on the lights shining brightly back into being

I feel so 1993 that I dunk myself into grass little more than I am
falling down with my 1993 shoes and my Orlando Magic hat

20whenever is me in space as I have always been in space and that space is constantly overtaking me

2012 is not the end no matter who says so God or you

in 1999 I will sit joyously alone listening to an album by Spineshank in the upstairs bedroom of my Georgia grandparents’ farm house as the decade ends and the rest of the world worries and celebrates and I just sit there nodding my head racing speed boats through European cities on the computer where all music sounds like the buzzing of real flies through the fruit of everything

in 2010 I will realize that every thought is a prayer and all thought has always been prayer and then eventually I’ll feel bad about this like all my thinking has diluted my prayer and I will grow gloomy and my thoughts will turn to crud whether on purpose or not on purpose and I think maybe I had the prayer realization in 1999 as well but my thoughts were anti-prayer anti-thoughts and the only aim was to make my body leave the bed and hover inches below the ceiling so close that if I thrash I will scrape the ceiling and bleed

in 2013 I will actually bring you a can of NOS to make you feel better and in 2012 someone will say Dan this NOS bit seems too flippant to include in a poem of such weight but this poem this poem does not feel heavy to me and NOS is the least flippant promise I have ever made because of the love that that can of NOS has come to represent at least the love that I feel which right now is not rot

in 2009 I drank a Red Bull and promptly had an anxiety attack on the bathroom floor of my final Muncie apartment while a friend sat outside the bathroom door singing along to a song, I don’t remember which song, off of Beck’s One Foot in the Grave and now I’m thinking that the energy in energy drinks might actually be love or fear or some kind of combination of the two

in 2011 I sit sober in this room that I am writing this poem from hearing traffic and crows outside and trying to sit between the dust collisions and the fact that dust is mostly composed of dead skin a thing that I am quite aware of because here is my skin on my hands and my arms and all over my body which is allergic to dust which is the most amazing way to exist

in 2012 I will figure my shit out
in 2012 the world will not end

in 2013 I will assemble my shit

in 2002 I climbed a magnolia tree and my hair was long and I took a picture on a disposable camera and the picture was me and my face was a mask and once my face bled all over the earth between the tree and the house and above the fire ants and under the noise that I hear every time I try to imagine myself floating above the earth awaking joyful and apart from me

I am awoken in 1996 in my own bed fiddling behind my ear quiet fiddling and I pull the fiddle from behind my ear groggy I walk to the bathroom and break the fiddle in half and when I turn on the light the fiddle is a cockroach that I wash down the drain and the drain fiddles ever onward into my memory

I am awoken in 2008 by my shadow swallowed by the shadow of the room now attached to me and growing

the only ocean I ever saw was the ocean always around me the existence of which I became convinced underneath a table in 2003 when plugging in a lamp and bumping my head on the ceiling of the table and spilling water from the fishbowl and the fish on my head and watching the fish flop on the floor unable to breathe in my ocean