morning poem 8/20

I get distracted by the brand of my shorts
as I watch myself walk up the ancient mountain
because I am obsessed with reality

Someone smashed a bug
that I assumed was Zeus
and I wanted to push him
into a shallow spring

I'm not saying gods are great
but it might be better
than being
obsessed with reality

maybe the mountain is too high,
I hope, to be touched by this modern heat
they say that without it
Greece wouldn't mean anything

I don't even want to talk about all the men
with world war haircuts
jack knifing into the pools,
or Venus' Vanity,
as we were calling them

I could not casually eat
salami in her house

or wrap a rubber band around
some deli cheese
like I do not want to be me
on this mountain

thinking I was born into too new of houses
to even be able to see my body on this continent

I pack the cherry pit in the water bottle
to not risk some eternal accidental growth

and because I could stare at the corner of any room indefinitely
all this beauty is a little hard for me,

after all, home is simply cars forever

I said I hate this international soccer
fade that spells war
on the side of every head
of every European man
I said it scares me

a cigarette butt bobbed past me
in Venus's bathtub

I decided I only believe in detail
but all I can think about is continents