the fatal uxoriousness of kal-el

even though in giving it all away, man, in shuffling priorities, the likes of this, well, man, to do so for some chick, well, that’s just what there is, in or about, in any, or all, any one to two or three less ways about it. so there are, like, principles involved, stirrings of pandering and or, well, quintessential pussyfooting behavioral patterns that cannot go, like, unnoticed. but we’ve got to involve logic here at some point, though love knows no solid-footing, well, there are survival instincts to blame or bemoan still, well, in the loggia of the thing at least. and then we fold. yep, that’s sure enough. move inward if there is to be no onward. always an escape, though. right? just like thinking it makes it so, and the power of love holds sway. well wishings are one thing. good tidings? well, that’s another orderly, static holdover from harder-than-these times. the cape? not really a functional device anyway. could lose it and not lose much but style. point that out to her. maybe it’s a barometer for flatulence. something kicks, man, it kicks my head in, and then there’s a brawl to get the hell out of, at a diner maybe, and it’s chards of glass to step over for a bit. i don’t know. spread thinner than this, maybe, but the sky’s just not the same when you’re stuck looking up at it. now, well, it’s just falling all around. but i’m not drinking. i don’t need to cry. no. i’ve grown passionate about my handkerchief collection, and, well, there’ll be some kryptonite in my soup tomorrow. i’m sure of it. and this prison of normalcy leaves me sluggish and entranced by sitcoms. there’s no imminent crisis of belief. my personality’s on loan, and, well, the chances of me scrapping some of it back are looking like a hologram of my folks in an icy fortress where my solitude’s dug its own grave. are lazy kisses worth the lack of super ones? sapped of all powers by the powers of love. how trite. how fucking cliché. but that’s just it. it comes true at last, and you go around being busy living your adult life so you don’t, like, notice much of it. but there’s more than a simple look-through-it to my sight, and my old puissant self’s just a bad dream i’m trying to conk out of my head. no need to be exceptional anymore. a relief? man, sometimes i don’t even care three ways or another. somewhere they’re playing mercy, mercy me. but not for me. not for me. painters have all the luck. being melancholy might suit a more artistic disposition. me? well, man, i’m here wasting away under the erased-chalkboard colors of day. i’m spending money on lottery tickets, taking the dog for walks, thumbing through dickens, getting haircuts and taking showers and buying groceries and neatly stacking dried dishes. i’ve got my story magazines and my shined shoes. the daily planet’s grind. a paycheck every other friday. the crackling of the heater burning dust in the corner makes me sentimental. i dream of long-gone swoops, nifty tucks of red-yellow-blue streaking into powdery tails, like jimmy’s old snapshots of me floating breezy and light in the arch of a softly tealing slab shoplifted from heaven. but now it’s just me slopping away here on a couch wondering why i exchanged a red sun for this lousy yellow one, losing hair and gaining belly fat, collecting junk mail, picking crumbs of toilet paper from the shower mat, and dusting off lois’s pulitzer medal with an old t-shirt. making the most out of being me, well, crippled like this, fragile, clumsy and boot-less, finding out who that me really is. well, man, you see it’s like i’ve been speaking with other voices for so long that i’ve now, like, forgotten the sound of my own, or, well, even how to use it. clark. jeepers. golly. holy skunk sweat. clark, clark, clark. thick too-big glasses, a suit and tie, slicked back hair. just a different uniform to have to fit into and be this thing that other people see and respond to in the way i notice that they do. indifferent. shit. there’s no phone booths left, and ducking into alleys just ain’t what it used to be. even though, now, well, man, i’m budgeting my feelings. i’m chopping vegetables in the kitchen, and i bleed, and i bleed, and now, well, i bleed. the usual so unusual, like being this way where i still, well, man, i won’t ever be one of you. but…but once, at one time i was known as the only son of the great jor-el. well, you see, also, way back when, well, it just so happens that i was superman.