mmmdcccxlvi

Ode to the Joy of Youth and Insects

So tired of the
sleepless fumes of
nearly breaking legs

off of dreams (of cock
roaches casting their
spells like Hogwarts) of

Kafka, until nothing but
the lack of any pain re
mains. Not even a screw

ball bug squirming in the
mutated hollows of an
accumulation of antiquated

novellas gives me the slight
est itch any more. I listen to
the stragglers left scratching

through the handwritten
memoranda left within
gnarled miniature ledgers,

all of them cowards like
me, writhing around within
this faded pink comfortor,

coddling its soft, poofed-out
curls while worrying about
microbes and cryptology.

Us poor things! All of us
so confident in impen
ding national incidents.

We settle, sketchy and un
comfortable, into the doom
as if it were just another day,

all but insignificant; at the
dawn, perhaps, of yet
another global pain crisis.