Stoop Denial

8/26/17  11:24 PM

"Close Your Eyes" - Netherfriends, 2017

New place, out of the way

A little home in a house

Surrounded by old faces that make me feel personal guilt

It seems this place is already my haunting past

A canal barge full of ghosts docks every day

And brings me new spectres to avoid

This canal town never sleeps

A man-made river built a man-made town

I fit into this place

Full of people striving to see the ditch as something more

Something not laden with trash and murky water

Me and my depression, sitting on a stoop

Trying to stave off help

We work together, most days

Holding happy thoughts and promising situations to the fire

I'm always susceptible to the devil's advocate

It makes too much sense

He'll show me what could happen

I say what might happen

So far, he has precedence

Every lick of evidence goes to support a rhetorical rebuttal

And I still deny

I deny until all that is left is the devil's hypothesis

And then

We change the subject

We go to another tree that needs chopping

To another thought that needs culling

To another conundrum that needs chasing

The last gasp I will breathe will be a denial

A blind refute of an obvious truth

Yelling from the stoop

Me and the devil's advocate