Another Sunday, sanctified with nothing,
I lie here, just another fake saint in a bad Renaissance painting,
eyes cast heavenward toward the water stain on the canvas, shaped like Ohio, or maybe it’s a bruise on God’s thigh.

The electronics all around create a gospel hymn.
The fans turn like an indifferent propeller to where we fly, on a plane I’ll never be allowed to land.

Doctors told me it’s called relaxation-induced anxiety,
which is a very expensive way of saying
my sanity can’t be trusted alone with a quiet room.

Give me a fire and I’ll run into it, a hero.
Give me a desk and pen and I’ll audit my sins
by the hour, with interest, in the dark.

And then, when the list is done,
the electronic in my pocket is a black mirror of what I’ll never be,
showing me a man who looks as if he’s getting ready to be cremated with his own obituary,
three typos in it and no one bought the papers to read it.

My pulse keeps pacing the hallway of forearms and wrists,
a drunk landlord checking every door at midnight,
rattling the knobs of rooms that are fine,
just fine, you animal, go to sleep.

I try the breathing. In for four, hold, out for six,
the way the app says, in the voice of a woman
who has clearly never owed anyone money.

My lungs fill like a motel pool in November,
leaves from last year’s fall and moldy water suffocate, and the faint suggestion of hope
that someone, somewhere, is about to be disappointed.
It’s me. It’s always been me. I’m the someone.

And the joke, the real joke, the one they’ll carve
on the little stone, with the wrong dates,
is that I begged for peace on my knees for years,
and when it finally came up to me repeatedly,
I just switched off the lights that said “hope,”
threw away the fresh, bearing casseroles meant to nourish a new man,
and told my guardian angel, who haunts me at night,
I can’t, or more like I don’t have the discipline to stick to anything.

So I locked the door and hid behind the couch
and whispered who sent you, and what do you want.

And he just stares, and I open my eyes.
The saint was only a painting on the wall, the TV playing something calm, sports, all along,
a peaceful evening all the way to the beautiful clear sky, stars and full moon.  And the pool has kids laughing and smiling at it all.
A perfect night.

I wasted it stuck navigating in my head, stuck behind eyes that show nothing, no soul, inside.

All I had to do was sit and relax.
And I can’t.