Words I Can't Afford

Sometimes I wonder why I never seem to use the words I say properly,
how they always seem slightly flat or sharp,

and why, like the bend of a guitar string rising and falling to a melody
it never quite seems to be in time with,
I take so long to get to the point, only to fall off of it again.

And yeah, even the poem isn’t immune.
What time is there for poetry when there are so many dishes to put away,
so many piles of cat excrement and vomit to pick up?

Just this morning it took me an hour to clean everything up and take out the trash
and empty the dishwasher and discover the dishwasher was broken,

cat diarrhea on my fingers, my hand in the garbage disposal fiddling
through the foot my wife and I put our mouths on the night before,
sopping the cat puke off the floor,

over and over I walk out into the morning
stench of shit-steamed garlic piled high on a plate of darkness,
and question how I haven’t gone crazy yet, and then it dawns on me: I have.

But then crazy is too exact a word to use in this song.
If I persuade you I’m being haunted by sensations I do not want to experience
then I’m trying harder than I’d like to admit at figuring out how to be more imaginative.

Right now I’m entertaining the idea that if start this thought believably enough,
some part of me will be so impressed by the immediacy of my dream
that it will go out of it’s way to bring me home with words I can’t afford.