all the f#s - just for now

For years I cobbled together
this house of cards
like a hustler or a magician
all those patches making a cage
for all the f’s all at once

and I sat there frozen
on my fighting mad
fawning for a little reprieve
being convinced
the universe was an asshole.

Yet – the universe now is you
so by that logic
you must be the asshole
– and that logic left me stranded
and sent me fleeing the scene
of this unfathomable crime
back into madness, sadness, coldness.

Now you got your wish, I suppose
the coldness gave way to numbness,
a thawing of a kind:
my carefully stacked house of cards
got robbed in my absence
brought down by the scattering clouds.

Now I am homeless in a sense
and winter is coming:
I wrap myself in cloudy scraps
slowly dissipating, just like me-that-never-was.
This time the madness is quiet, incubating.
It has a name too: Maybe.

Maybe the universe is an asshole.
But I know you are not.
You were just human, doing your best
with a hand of cards stacked against you:
my home, short-lived as it was.

Maybe this bigger picture
was never meant for cards
or castles in the clouds.

Maybe, if I am lucky,
I just got no more f’s to give
and the three little piggies
just got one over the big bad wolf.
And maybe they don’t know it yet.

“Maybe” is certainly hard to get a grip on.