picking daisies

pacing to the left, then to
the right,
the skinny little art major college boy
practically wore down the carpet
in his room, he paced so much.
the skinny little art major college boy
was totally naked, clothes bothered
him when he was in his worry mode,
and he was sure in his worry mode
now,
ah yes indeed,
he was quite the worrier.
everything worried him.
everything made him fret.
he worried and worried and worried
and fretted and fretted and
paced to the left and
then to the right
and outside it started
to rain and then thunder and
lightning and
then gusts of wind rattled
his bedroom window and still
the skinny naked little art major college boy
went right on
pacing and worrying and fretting.
the level of his anxiety
could be described as a 10 on a
scale of 1 to 10
and when
the rain and thunder and lightning
and wind finally stopped,
the skinny naked little art major college boy
suddenly quit
pacing,
sometimes jerking off really helped
calm him down for a few moments,
he'd seen it work that way before,
more than once, in fact,
and so he
lay down on his back
on top of his bed and
tugged on his surprisingly
big vigorously rock-hard dick for a while
until he spurted cum all
over his skinny naked chest and belly
and then he wiped it off himself
and lay there staring wide-eyed
at the ceiling, and then wouldn't ya know
goddammit this time jerking off
didn't calm him down all that
much now did it
and so then
it was right back to
fretting and worrying and
fretting some more so he
got right back out of bed
and paced some more
and wore down the carpet some more
and
by now it was well after midnight
but still the skinny naked little art major college boy
couldn't sleep,
still he worried and fretted
and worried some more,
it was all just so
fucking much -- he worried
about everything, this,
that, whatever crossed his
mind, he couldn't stop
thinking about it,
this, that, the
other, just EVERYthing --
now take
Edvard Munch's
THE SCREAM, for instance --
one of them
recently sold for 55 million,
now how could anyone
sleep after that?

--Carl Miller Daniels (This poem also appears in my book Be Kind to Strangers, published by BareBackPress in 2015. The poem first appeared in Chiron Review, Issue 99, Spring 2010.)