fluorescent mangos

nothing was obvious to him.
nothing was clear.
the smell of rainwater, so much like lavender.
the taste of whiskey, so much like happiness.
how could he be this good-looking on the
outside and feel this bad
on this inside?
it just didn't make sense.
in the heart of the forest, surrounded
by nothing but pretty things,
how could he feel as bad as he felt?
nothing made sense.
nothing followed logically from anything else.
sitting pretty and alone in his spiffy apartment
surrounded by nothing but pretty things,
it would seem he should feel, well,
better, wouldn't one think it would
work out that way?
that wispy beard he was growing,
was starting to seem like a good idea.
he didn't know why, exactly.
but he decided to just let it grow.
might as well. meat on the
table, meat on his bones. where
was the logic? perhaps in the marrow,
there in the long calcium tubes
slimed with oil and
bits of salty red pepper.

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appeared in Zygote in My Coffee, Winter 2009, print issue #6.  And it appears in an interview I did with The Commonline Journal, Issue #010, Summer 2009, http://www.commonlinejournal.com/2009/07/an-interview-with-poet-carl-miller.html.)