a slothful Mephistopheles splayed out on the couch

that inability to move forward 
and get past bitterness or loneliness;
the titular villain of lingering ghosts—
the remnants of a past relationship 
as well as the vacant silence 
of pandemic-stricken creativity. 

my musings are met with back-alley saxophones 
that sound like distant sirens;
a slice of life when I was out walking around 
in a version of myself that I had never seen before,
trying to overcome that worst side of me.

there’s this other way of changing your life
which is to start with a demolition and then work from there—
a very different feeling hearing a song 
come on spontaneously on a radio 
than it is hearing it on an album or a playlist...
and that is how you fix the future.