Distance (2000)

 

If you take a pencil and hold it out at arm’s length

you can use the eraser to block out the entire moon:

all of it

even when it hangs low and pregnant in the sky

in all it’s orange gold magnificence

 

I tell you this because I need you to understand

how something so small

can obscure something so immense.

 

I was thinking of you

while I listened to the rhythm of the rain on my window

thinking of you

while I wrote out multiplication tables and broke pencils in frustration

 

you gotta realize that how you see things

changes depending on the lens you look through

that windows aren’t any less real because they’re transparent.

 

all that means is that you can see through them.

 

and the greater the distance between point A and point B

the more difficult the word problem becomes

the more distorted the images get.

 

I know now that we’re a product of this new math

simply the sum of imaginary numbers

 

because

 

now we have become

one too many “Kids in the Hall” reruns on a Sunday afternoon

the joke with the perpetually forgotten punchline.

 

didja ever stop
            didja ever stop to consider

that maybe it’s nothing more than air weighing us down

stooping our shoulders

bending our backs

 

nothing like a little atmospheric pressure

to keep us from vacuum induced delirium.

 

and didja ever stop

            didja ever stop to consider

that sometimes all something needs to grow

is a whole lot of empty space

a whole lot of nothing

 

and it’s just too easy to imagine that

when you have that pencil in your hand

and you can’t see the moon

it’s just too easy to believe

that maybe it was never really there

that there wasn’t anything at all here to see,

folks,

nothing to see here

 

if the glass isn’t ground thin enough

it’s easy to imagine

that all there is

is some canned laughter,

eraser dust,

and a so much air

you could never breathe it all.