Bad Advice

The armchair floral, faded brown.

I traced the pattern, lost and deep.

Then from her lips, she let it down:

"Just choose to be happy, don't you weep."

Just choose. As if it were a coat,

I'd pick off a rack, a simple whim.

A hollow word caught in my throat,

a silent, bitter, useless hymn.

It rings, sometimes, that simple phrase.

Like sandpaper on a raw nerve, it rubs.

Through all these complicated days,

it just sits there, like an empty club.