Sometimes all you need to admit that you're uncharacteristically cool with all of this is a bit of liquid courage and a pinch of frustrated madness swished around until you're sarcastically committing to loving the **** out of your current situation with a vague suspicion that you're not actually being ironic.

Not the product nor conclusion, but the case that merely holds it.
The theory that posits without endeavoring to ever actually prove it.
You are but the hook, the hanger, the mannequin that displays the lifestyle you'll never have the courage to actually wear outside the store that made it.
Doomed to hide in other peoples' lives.
Relishing the moments when someone else is reflected in the mirror.

The glow of streetlight bled through rows of aluminum,
streaking the scene in shadow.
An off-season quiet stirring in the bones,
and the intermittent flash of a moth's wings.
The echo of cicadas drowning out everything.
A hum to follow you home.

Contrary to what you may be thinking,
I am not a contrairian.
I like to play Angel's Counsel to your Devil's Advocate, but not just because I've been drinking.
(Though, to be fair, I have been, but forgive me. I'm celebrating.)
Anything worth debating always has two sides.
Try seeing them both for a change before dividing the lines.
And while it may sound contradictory at times, and doesn't end in a rhyme,
just meet me in the middle, *******!

Four magenta rings, sheathed in jellied casing,
floating between the rocks.

I popped mine on a barnacle - went backwards too fast.
Barely made it to shore before it was nothing but a limp piece of rubber.

The young ones are out there tossing them around.
Mounds of translucent flesh passed from hand to hand.
Touched, squeezed, pressed; watch this trick.

Harmless, they assure me. I'm less convinced.

On the beach, I find one alone.
No color to it.
A prodding finger.
Soft sensation.
A giving way.

Dumb mass of cells.

She's counting calories and mumbling numbers aloud,
making minute adjustments to the value they've assigned her.
Determined at birth, but her worth should be more impacted by what she's found.
She dreams of the day when she can throw figures away and have her intangibles defined:
the tone of her speech,
whittled down beliefs,
her finger-***** sharpness of mind.

She tracks the dates and diets while waiting,
not impatient nor growing frustrated.
With faith, she knows there will come a day when she'll finally be loved by the blind.

There are some things he can't refuse.
He goes into the dark with a ***.
He's probably out there right now, proposing to a masseuse
with balled up bills in a box.

Caked in sticky layers of soot, from the burning down below.
Layers of filth to fertilize his rotten garden growth.

Bathed in neon light, he goes seeking the obscene.
He showers every single night,
but his mind is far from clean.