"Increasingly Virtual Worlds" by R.M. O'Brien

Increasingly Virtual Worlds
RM O'Brien

Tonight I am prolifig. I turn all my tears into ashes.

I got famous for once successfully cramming five years' lonely into one night's drunk and I couldn't kiss anyone when it was done.

I shatter a bottle everyone stands up and removes his hat.

I am the brightest thing for miles moving around Baltimore in the most powerful machine I own.

Do you know why I pulled you over?

b/c I get hard driving the interceptor and the lights and sirens help me make it

b/c you are wanted for the unlicensed transmutation of tears into ashes—you fit a description

b/c it's unlawful to shine brighter than the sun

b/c there are a lot of crazies out here and I wanted to make sure you were wearing yr seatbelt—Robert you are a sacred child yr heart & lungs & light are precious to me

b/c someday you will choose a body for yr lover—it may not be the body she chooses for herself—we live in increasingly virtual worlds

(I wanted to tell him about transcendental numbers & luminescent animals—breaking a bottle our new nat'l anthem &c.—this is how I protect my immortality &c.)

Come on out here and touch yr nose and I'll let you go

& if you would, touch my nose

for it is lonely in this car at night in Baltimore & I am a warm body under these cuffs and gun and telescoping club

The ashes are still glowing.

The flowers are blooming out the passenger window.

I am prolifig, obvious, it's like I am making a movie.

O Nanak! I could smear these ashes on a baby's belly and she wd become a god

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R.M. O'Brien, 29, was born in Oswego, New York to a jeweler and a nurse. He lives in Baltimore with his wife and son, where he blogs for money and curates the monthly reading series WORMS. His chapbook, Ant Killer & Other Poems, exists. Birds Blur Together, a collaboraçion w/ poet Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez, is forthcoming this year on his own WORMS Press.