JORDAN HAMEL
The Simple Life
In this city you can be whoever you want
and I’m still so much myself it’s disgusting
nothing else fits, nothing is comfortable,
I just want comfort, I want, I want
poorly-aged fish-out-of-water celebrity voyeurism
to remind me living can be so, um, uncomplicated
there’s nothing left for me here except reality
sleep demons waving performance plans
mandatory psychometric pub quizzes
where every answer is a ghost you’ve buried
and every competitor is an auditioning persona
each more insufferable than the last
waving from the bar, shouting strangers shots
dominating the karaoke machine
blowing each other in the bathroom
scared of being wiped away like a bad pour
let’s show them all we can last, we can
join a startup incubator as endurance art
double our screen time as endurance art
develop imposter syndrome as endurance art
collectively dissolve into the void to protest
my own expectations, but it’s alright,
I’m still a thing with a beginning, somewhere
to return to, paddocks, bales and sheds for miles
I’ve got my roots, my boots and shovel. I’m ready
to uhhhhh… work the soil… You hear that, soil?
no one is ready for this man of the earth, pulling up
the best version of me, no one has seen a body so tireless
I mean tired, so tired, lying in bed, Amazon Prime night-light
Paris and Nicole crawling out of my laptop screen
wet with manure and static, a weighted blanket
of hair extensions smothering me soothing me
as I disappear into a peroxide swaddle, blonde follicles
entering every orifice, kneading my brain making me happy
to disappear as they tell me I’m not cut out for this tell me
ssshh who’s a good boy? who tries on the remains of others?
tell me to rest easy, and be comfortably forgotten