One and one-half degrees
ago, I sought supplementary employment
to fund death-wish extracurriculars

You’ll get bored
said the manager over the phone
Overqualified

Despite white-hot yearning
for endangering my life, I
like a brown goldfish in a plastic bowl

too aware of its spherical
condition, could not contain
the exponential need to expand

into myself, then outward
for too long. One and one-half
degrees later, bars and dorms

and cellblocks in the rearview
growing more distant with each passing
of the second hand, like an old hometown

where memories hurt, the State is quick
to remind me, through compacts with partners,
of my place in their world right now:

the dumpster-fire parts of my past
matter like back taxes, my desire to give
back life to the sick and suffering

with the same tired/repentant hands
that reluctantly snatched a soul
from its innocent brown body

must be tempered, for the time being.
& I am okay with that.
Try again in 3 years

when my name is off paper,
full on education,
bloated with grief/passion.