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now i’m sitting in the living room of our Airbnb,

beady-eyed bloodshot and tired –
so tired –

but like a wild misimprinted baby
– i just thought i would give it some pets!
whoopsie-daisy! my bad! –
i’m followed constantly and i can’t take it back,
its steps so loud because the built-in surround sound
can’t pick up the reticent tones of
metaphors unrooted-out

and now i’m sitting on the toilet taking a shit

and i’m very weary and it’s very padded
and she cries out that she’s going to bed.

if i say it for attention it works.
people turn and give me the usual looks reserved
primarily for the patently undercooked
and chock it up to all the antidepressants i took

and the weed,
and the booze –
too much drink and i start crying
because by then i have nothing to lose.
“everyone can leave ANYTIME they choose!”

and now i joke about seppuku.

i told her the other day
when we watched the trailer
that it made it look like more self-important streaming fodder
like that’s really what i want to do while i’m on vacation
is go on another elegiac television denunciation
where every other unoriginal rhyme ends in -ation

with all those critics quotes that make me shudder:
so smartly-written by some executive’s step-daughter
claiming its answers aren’t so easy to discover –
unless you consider the one guy in the first five minutes
who has nothing to do with anything and
why is he there?
film theory teaches there are no wasted bodies
so he’s obviously the little girl’s slayer
but you won’t find out for sure for two-and-a-half hours.
another wasted afternoon that gullible audiences so dared

so i wonder sometimes whether suicide is easier.
not that i would ever do it, i think,

but sometimes at work
the cardboard edges too easily sink
into cavil-tunnelled flesh on the brink
of another syndrome kidney failure already tried & failed to set.
i’m getting older but my bed’s not made yet.
at some point Dad and his donation will both be dead.
i guess it’s good our mortgage is so close-by
to a hospice where the weekly on-site hemodialysis only costs
19.99

and now i’m in the bathtub.

i hit my toe on the faucet as i come up for air
and i’m very aware
that i sliced it open at the nail and i’m bleeding everywhere.

you all need to pay attention to me
because one day i’ll leave
because my career will be milking male monkeys in heat.

//wd 10.13.2023

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