Sophomore Orientation

What am I doing here?

Why did you drop me off?

When are you picking me up, Mom?

Everyone else here is asking the same questions.

We are all just walking,

sometimes sprinting,

in a state of feverish delirium,

exchanging clues found by the side of the road

or in labor and delivery wards.

Some of us surrendered to confusion,

others utterly convinced by an explanation they heard at a campfire in Babylon.

No one knows shit, though.

And more importantly,

the ones who might

don't want to talk to us anymore.

They just sit in caves like rocks,

with tears spilling out of their eyes.

The sign above the door reads:

Sophomore Class of Divine Interlopers.

We scurry about.

Scavenging.

Foraging.

Probing.

Our whiskers, noses, furry ears

building detailed maps of this place.

Jotting them down in notepads

to compare and debate later in the library.

At rare moments I get the feeling

that I might actually like this place.

A desert sunset.

An MDMA binge at a rave.

Maybe I can stay here.

Maybe I belong.

Then the Pacific coughs up a continent of plastic.

Snaps you right out of your dopamine-induced euphoria.

There you are again,

sad, hungry, waiting in the parking lot

for Mom.

Period Four is Math class.

Sitting with a nail file,

softening the hard edges of a wooden cube.

Trying to fit it into the round hole.

There must be an easier way.

Got a call last night.

Thought it was spam,

but it was the Earth calling,

yelling, raging, cursing me out.

Accusing me of all sorts of nonsense.

Like naming rivers

and rearranging continents.

Calling me an interloper.

I couldn't take that tone any longer.

I yelled into the phone,

"But I'm fucking divine too!"

She hung up.

I turned off the phone.

I had to get up early in the morning.

Fountain of youth.

Fountain of crude.

Fountain of knowledge.

Fountain of blood.

Doesn't matter.

Just drill a hole and hope something's in there.

Hope a gusher shoots skyward

like an SOS flare from the center of the Earth,

from the center of Whole Foods.

I'm hungry.

Always hungry.

If I had to describe this place

in one word,

I would say,

"gnawing hunger."

I mean,

"hunger."

Damn it.

No matter what I do,

I always wake up hungry.

Hungry for sleep,

for sex,

for money,

for love,

for some fucking inspiration.

For another Apple.

Feeding whatever it is

that's pulling on my shirt

produces only a reprieve.

Then it returns

with its mob of delinquent friends,

poking at my flesh,

calling it motivation

or purpose.

Spraying intellectual confetti all over the room

and making a total mess of me.

I think I'm starting to get it tho.

I feel like I can do well on the exam

if I could just focus.

Or if there was an exam.

The faculty might be a hallucination.

There is no spoon,

but there might be chopsticks.