The Life You Want

Everywhere you look you see it

thriving:  runs by most mornings in Spandex; rests 

in a hammock sipping tea

each afternoon.  The songs you adore rush

mellifluous from someone else’s mouth. 

A Humvee, a log cabin in Montana, a model’s body—

a life collaged from chic magazines

tattered and taped to your refrigerator. 

Yet, your sorrows continue to grow faster

than your garden.  Self-help books explain 

how flowers understand serenity better, so you resent

their beauty, their quiet knowledge.  Anxiety

a dog that always needs walking.  Envy a hive

in your head.  You repeat, again, the angelic

affirmations.  Then forget it all

standing in line at Wal-Mart, wanting to kill

the clerk because she’s slow, hating

the guy in front of you for buying so much stuff, pissed

because they haven’t discovered a way

to squeeze enlightenment into your shampoo; because you

can’t order it off a drive-thru menu, get it

SuperSized.  You’ve seen the life you want

pulling fruit from its orchard, losing weight

and making friends, humming sweetly

on the other side of the hedge—giving freely

what you can’t understand.  How?  and Why not me?

rotting like bruised apples inside your head.