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I have only one defender.
A star wars rocket, gleaming,
shrieking brilliantly against dark fog.
She only gets attackers one at a time.
And attackers are everywhere.

Most would deem it hopeless,
but I keep praying.
I have sobriety,
but does that alleviate or aggravate?

Attackers see through my thin skin,
so easily bludgeon fragile organs.

The rocket only passes every other week,
on Thursday at six in the evening.
She gives me thin layers for protection,
like at the football game where ‘D’ is for dipshit,
and the fence is white picket with major gaps.
I need a massive line,
Michigan men greater than 300 pounds.
But all I have is these thin, brittle pickets.

I pay my only defender every other Thursday.
Without money, I would be without a defender.
Could I buy more defenders?

Difficult to face the day with only one defender.
If it’s not a rocket Thursday, I am fully desperate.
On rocket Thursdays, I get to shoot
for the Ground Floor, which is safe and healthy.
I come up from B329 to around B220
where my elevator stops, having no more spiritual strength.
Defense on those days is a crib with baseball netting,
firm cable to stop the cement trucks without brakes.

Sometimes, my defense is the trench.
World War I trench with barbed wire trimmings.
Darkness surrounds, deep pain pervades.
I am always in the trench.
Attackers lob anti-human, explosive cement trucks.
The trench only gives false comfort, littered,
covered with pieces of my soul like paper mache.

The best non-human defender is my music.
Music is a hovercraft, flying above the shit,
possessing big rubber bumpers.
I fly about, wrenches twisting my skull, ear phones blasting.
My music for defense was composed by other babies,
by people who were also lacking defense.
It is like two scrawny, furry dudes, against the torn brick,
safely blindfolded, waiting for the firing squad.

I know how sick I am.
Attackers won’t shoot me like I want,
as an animal who need not suffer any longer.
My defender tells me the sickness is not forever,
but each and every single day
is dramatically closer to forever.
Perhaps the attackers will die.
But shall I wait that long?

I Plead with my defender to fly her rocket every day.
She laughs large and says
big companies will not pay
for rocket time for a functioning guy,
who is not a suicide,

which is exactly
how we
all
arrive
at that
permanent
solution.

But today, I crawl in the trench
without courage to slaughter myself.
I say, “God, please take all of this away.”
God laughs, too.
He tells me to be grateful for the
sparkling fires from the rocket
that appear on alternating Thursdays,
and to shut my damn mouth.