aka. ruining it

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oh God,
my life.


it’s 11:59 on my Saturday night
and His phone is already on silent.
i wish i could afford the same capacity to ignore
knowing omnipresently that everything was
alright.


back to life.
back to reality.
however do you want me?

i’m watching a twenty-something YouTube partner from Australia
demonstrate a twenty-dollar iPod rip-off from China
while i dig into another box of Extra Toasty Cheez-It’s –
courtesy of Kellanova –
cronch-cronch-cronch
lip-smacking-sounds amok

and at the back of my mind, i can’t help to wander
why i still haven’t taken my two scoops of
smooth, orange-flavoured fibre,
of which consideration is by Procter & Gamble
and the cold enamel
of the toilet bowl i’ve yet to spackle.


the jester takes comparison pics between the knock-off,
his iPhone, and his Pixel
of his dog,
his mouser,
his fenced-in yard –
and i know how much pet food costs:
while i personally have none, i have family who does
and it occurs to me that’s probably where this was

and then the camera flips to face his quaff,
looking like i could have fifteen years younger
had i kept the same locks,
and avoided whatever life conundrum concocted the lump
what is the foreign organ from my father
in my tum,
and the fat it collected as it settled upstream
and the broken record’s excuse for skipping is that
some things in life are just worth repeating

and the professional influencer/reviewer/whatever
declares the phone, its box,
its contents as waste,
but his video is disposable
so who is really responsible
for emptying the garbage of digital content?
i slouch further into the couch.

he ruined it


and then i thought about what else
i could be coming up with.


writer’s block? that’s what it’s called?
it’s not a block. it’s a wall.
and not a Roger Waters “Wall”©
like i’ve alluded to several iterative stanzas before –
an annoying child of Dickens, calling for more –
but a Warren Daske Wacky Wonderworld of Walls,
like the Kojima/del Toro demo for “Silent Hills”:
a liminal space of nothing but barriers
and when i look in the mirror,
it’s not Norman Reedus
but a chubby Ralph Macchio.

i’ve been told it was DiCaprio.
the linearity of time means physical flattery
can only hover over so long.


morning comes.
i take another hoot of the vaporizer
as i hack away at the wallpaper paste
listening to my father’s voice on the Motorola,
making sure he has everything for his trip
to 6th Dimension.
it’s like an Okanagan Burning Man without the attendance.

i’m sweating like bejeezus.
i told my wife, “it’s my Sunday
and you know i don’t want to do anything”

and then she helps me move the furniture.

//wd 10.11.2024

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