mmmdxix

Topography of the Broken Bed

     snowful awful    tearful wishful
                            —Hoa Nguyen

this mood elaboration, the first
movement of four, is not gonna
render me extinct. the no movement

of this mood prunes nothing, proves
to be stasis, rather than movement,
that’s the movement in which we are

now invested. my sanctions are to
get up and pee fourteen times and
then walk to the animal shelter,

pick out the cutest, sweetest
imaginary kitten, bring him home
(the home which has no kitchen),

feed him the food that kitchenlessly
remains within this home’s confines –
can’t get anymore for ten whole days –

this way i’ve a small and terrified
starvation companion (rest assured,
this is hyperbole; i’ll starve alone, no

worries), and next on the list is to re
fuse the meeting with the heads of
fraud, the meeting in which i demand

all of my money back for the one
thousandth time (this is a celebration,
in case that has not become head-

bonkingly apparent). the fraudheads
know and love this, by which i mean
the fact that time is famously a waste,

and humanity is its excrement. even
when it knows it should move about,
exercise, time stands perfectly still, no

movement, even when standing at
our side, even when out of mind,
it stands there, silently being.

the currency of being. for time, this

is fiduciary; monetary and cryptic.
it looks in the mirror, loves to

do this, admires its sexual face
for hours, if such things existed,
but too many sexual faces induce

movement. and time has none. it 

stands (or sits) perfectly still, admir

ing its sexual face with no tics, it loves

this joke – but cannot be funny,

certainly out loud there is no music 

to this melody, no movement in this

movement. but that doesn’t
stop time’s jokes: e.g., time to 

get handsy with hands-free time,

it considers, hilariously. del

inquent time, that asshole
with too much of itself on its

hands-free immobility, our hero,
our long-bearded dad, who fought 

the mighty fight against the implement

ation of a new year just so that it could

invent it. time, so corrupt, so warped.
and it continues, it continues its

consideration of its humorous

inner monologue, a rather corny 

stand-up routine, as it turns out:

if i lived in an alternate universe,
in another dimension, why, i’d
be riding a burning rollercoaster,

i’d learn screaming, i’d learn nauseous,
the entire amusement (amusement!)
park having only just been amusingly

blown near to oblivion by an asteroid,
or a nuclear bomb. so hilarious, time
cannot be still, all of a sudden needs

desperately to laugh, but being un

able to laugh, begins to jerk and tick,

a bit like a well-intentioned alarm

clock - those whom only history can 

prove existed.  time feels.  time’s...ill?

a rancid feeling wells up inside of time

that cannot, of course, be expelled.  and
it is happening, that which had been foretold:

that this is how time dies, being unable to puke.