2018.2 Cycle

It all crowds my head. Your heat flickers inside me
And there’s no release, no means to breach this
I am lost in the white noise crackle, dappled in the harmful,
Gullet full of other people’s bile.
And I want to help. I really, really want to help
Help me. Help me stop this. Help.

Stop.

Step away, but that’s not far enough
Say it clearly, cite the parallels they’ve learned to adapt to -
Kitchen utensils as a measurement of capacity.
Acknowledgement
Affirmation
Just one more thing.
No more.
No more things
No more citations, no more debate,
No more inference that my interferent noise is not great enough
To break the signal.
No more, please - I’m not a debate, my existence
My existence isn’t theoretical, charity, a lack of clarity
I AM NOT A TEXTBOOK EXAMPLE.
Google terminology
Google visibility
Google why jokes are important, actually
Google “kicking down”
Google cultural signifiers
Google privilege
Google check your fucking privilege
Google those who’ve been able to say more clearly: this is not a joke
Google the statistics
Google the death statistics
Google the deaths
Google why me opposing your entitled bullshit here is as important as opposing state-sanctioned bullshit in [pick a country where human rights are a big issue and insert here]
Google why my existence doesn’t invalidate yours
Google why words are important
Google the fuck out of why I’m calling you out.
Google us. Read the fucking names.

Breathe.
Just fucking breathe.

Mount the bike,
Take the time,
Spend the excess adrenalin,
Make physical pain the coin of distance, of deliverance, of perspective.
Make.
Make cloud patterns
Make nods at joggers and dogs and kids on scooters
Make a third personal best on that curve north
Make good headway against return headwind
Make faces at other cyclists, and returning geese, and cows, and

Is that a hide or a bomb shelter?
Is that a war memorial or an abandoned pump?
Is that

This is broad lungfuls
This is the body’s heat, whispering into entropy
This is glissades of temporary
This is

You are.

Breathe.
Signal.
Manoeuvre.
Return.
Breathe.
Be.

Now, what were you saying?