Iowa Nice as Survivor’s Guilt
Hello, guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! To quote rockstar and former member of my MySpace Top, Bret Michaels “whats’a goin’ on?” Strange man. I don’t really get the way he talks.
Anyway, I hope the week has been kind to you. And if not, I hope you get your revenge. I am actually in the process of seeking vengeance right now myself. The cicadas started buzzing really loud when I was watching Family Guy, and it freaked me out.
You might be saying, ”Seth, what‘s so scary about some cicadas? Thems just some bugs!” And you’re right to say it. I’m dumb! It’s not gonna stop me from hunting down a swarm of cicadas and telling them to knock it off. They’re loud! Louder than Peter Griffin!
Because really, it’s not about the noise, what the cicadas did wrong is show up right in the middle of a perfectly okay episode of Family Guy. Not because it made me lose track of the plot or interrupted a really good cutaway gag, but because I have fallen asleep with Family Guy on the TV, genuinely probably most nights of my life, stretching back to whenever they started airing reruns on Adult Swim.
Anymore I need to fall asleep watching or listening to something to make sure The Big Bad Thoughts don’t get any silence to fill. When I was a child, I think it still was a little bit that, but also that I was a baby and a coward, and I thought all of the noises outside were aliens trying to kill me. I am not exaggerating; this is precisely what I thought for probably too long and honestly I am still not convinced I was wrong. But anyway, I couldn’t stand the noise the cicadas made when I was a kid. I don’t think I knew they were cicadas even, but the ominous, sometimes overwhelmingly loud buzzes were one of the primary drivers of my need for bedtime Family Guy. And so hearing them come back, for just a moment, put me back in that headspace, in that fear, and in all seriousness, I’m not all that scared of aliens anymore, but I am still scared. Of going broke, of losing my brain, of dying, of heights, of losing people and of disappointing people I’ve already lost. Dumbass cicadas made me think about all that. And so I wrote this poem. I hope you like it.
iowa nice as survivor’s guilt
the cicada’s hum overtakes an episode of family guy/ the theme song’s brass arrangement fades in the buzz—it’s 2026 and 2007 all the same/ i’m in the stench of my childhood bedroom/ i’m in a home i own i look out the window/ and all i see are fields of diamonds and daggers i look/ in the mirror i see a battered frontal lobe/ fading gray painted with dashed yellow lines. a road beaten into the matter/you may pass if you’re careful, may crash if you’re not/ it’s been 25 years since i’ve been able to fall asleep without the tv on/ and 4 that ive been able to sleep without a drink./ the bugs always scared me. the buzz dared my blood to race,/ against what, who knows, but it always,/ i always, lost./ when i heard the trains outside my window as a child i felt like death was near/ and i’ve never known why./ now, trains or no trains, i stick my head outside my window/ I know that death is near, far, everywhere in between./ it probably could have or should have been me, but it wasn’t, it hasn’t been yet, and there’s nothing more to it than that./ i scream mudvayne lyrics drunk/ on a parking ramp some night in 2014/ and the friend who picked me up that night from the mcdonald’s across the street is dead now./ the cicadas were speaking in tongues and i almost knew what they wanted me to do/ before i hit my head and fell asleep/ in a pile of french fries. salt and scum of the earth/ tossed together in a paper bag and wrapped over my head/ i learned how to breathe without lungs, i learned how to speak with my tongue tied like a balloon animal./ tonight stewie uses a time machine to bring brian back from the dead/and i am glad,/ the flitting of my eyes fading into/ the night filters cartoon blood on the cartoon street/ and i swear there was a time before all of this./ i swear there have been days that didnt need/ to be forgotten with late-night television./ i swear i used to laugh at lighter fare./ i swear i once welcomed the cicadas, the crickets, the trains, the sirens, the soft coo of the sleeping dog the jagged rattle of the window unit, the rapid flick of my grandmothers yellow lighter./ i swear they weren’t all always threats./ i suppose it’s good that the teachers and the tvs lied/when they told us we can be whatever we want to be./ i have wanted to be dead/ so many times but tonight i don’t think i do./ i think tomorrow i probably won’t, either./ i’m drinking an a&w sugar free cream soda out of a chilled mug/ and the out of season christmas lights twinkle off the glass as artificially flavored foam dots my nose./ there is something comforting in the faux wood paneling/ but there’s something about it that makes me panic and i can’t place the source of my dismay,/ can’t track the fingerprints on the hands reaching through my chest,/ lingering./ an aorta whistling under the cicada buzz./ a ventricle filling, leaking. sustaining its own manipulation./ i’m so untethered.
Alright, bye!!
