Steve Roberts

WHEN YOU'RE NOT WEIRD

When you're not weird you begin to feel dark and hard within your throat.
You're not weird when you begin to talk about books as if they were ice.
Not weird, a pile of your hair on the back doorstep.
Weird, how science can make you want to scalp someone,
how you wonder why superheroes neglected you as a child.
You toss epithets at baseball players with true listlessness in your heart.
Toss kisses out the window so your pure love will find them and walk on up.
Kisses like slaps in the face that make you want to call a lawyer.
Like escaped jailbirds that sit at the bar silently and calmly still.
Escaped from a marriage of laws like a large perverted croquet game.
From a life trapped in an inflexible lariat that's made of itchy yarn.
A pair of wings over your head so you can't see what you're covered in.
Pair of dice found in your sandwich that makes you wonder about your parents.
Of balloons that have sagged to the floor after months of bumping the ceiling.
Balloons are the trademark of clowns, which are the trademark of hidden anger,
are the ambassadors of diminished hope we hide in folds of street pamphlets.
The chemists that drop chemicals on astronaut's heads for research's sake.
Chemists who have fifteen chosen names they would have liked to been born with.
Who have grown their fingernails past Guinness records and are now bored.
Have written dissertations on their neighbor's scalps when they're not weird.

They're not weird, they are bored to have been born for research's sake,
street pamphlets of hidden anger bumping your parent's ceiling,
covered in itchy yarn at the calmly still croquet game.
Call a lawyer and walk on up in your heart as a child.
Scalp someone on the back doorstep as if they were ice in your throat.





Steve Roberts is currently in the Graduate Study Poetry Program at the New School. Before that he studied at the College of Santa Fe. He is from Dallas, Texas.