mmmmmcxcii

Cartoon Balloon

It’s early morning on the 16th of the month.
I just drank the last drops from what had been
a two liter bottle of Diet Dr Pepper.  What was
left filled one of my medium sized sea green
colored plastic cups (I have two of them; did I
start out with three, four?).  I’ve no money left 

for the month and won’t get my tiny subsidy 

check until the first.  I could lean my head
back upon my pillow right now, unable to
sleep, but to meditate on existence with
no income.  I could let those thoughts
(that thoughtlessness) overwhelm me
with anger or into resignation, or I
could instead close my eyes and
use my mind to move time, to
either make it go faster, or to

slow it down, feeling my body,

feel it inflate until I resemble

a gigantic parade balloon in

the faded image of a cartoon

character from my childhood, 

expanding easily to squeeze

myself into the moment until 

I’ve pushed time out through 

the fringes; or I might carry

the moment along with me,

and then speed ahead of it.

These are methods of existence

I have developed in order to weave

in and out of time’s typical cadence,

a timelessness within which I might 

sway in relative peace.  Until I begin 

to remember that no matter how much

I bend or fold it in order to exist outside

of its realm, usually in an effort to cope 

with my diminishing value, inside of my 

skin-sack of nothingness, I will still continue

to age, to grow older.  These tricks are of the
mind, are mere delusion; the peace that makes its
way into the dim crevasses within my head is but the
airy entropy that I am always becoming.  I’ll fight again 

to lift my lids, to squeeze my way back out of this stasis,
all the while a polluted airiness hisses its way out of

my nose, my ears, eyes and mouth, the gassy stuff

of me.  Until I am unrecognizable, opaque,
impossible to lean into or upon.  No

substance.  Until I am a nearly 

indiscernible whistle.  And soon

I will be nothing but gone.