poem of the day 03.10.16

watching marshmallow

take a monstrous morning shit

in the barren flower bed outside my window

as his owner shouts into her phone

i think at least the two of them are consistent

unlike poetry or hot water in this place

they are like death and taxes

i never liked marshmallow, even as a pup

the kind of terrier mix you make big u-shapes around

with an insidious bark and that awful name

cooed at during periwinkle stretches

of the most ungodly of morning hours

the way his excrement stench wafts into the apartment

along with his owner’s cigarette smoke

along with the bleating, nasal pace

of her inane and desperate conversations

but still i stand there, hidden by navy blue curtains,

watching the dog do his business

like i’m viewing some sort of alien ritual

like an old man with nothing better on his agenda

than to spend his fleeting hours sitting in a laundromat

never understanding why i don’t get things done

as ms. owner stubs out another ciggie

suggests that someone on the other line bite her

the two of us mesmerized by marshmallow’s

big fat turd steaming in the march cold

fertilizing nothing by the frozen dirt and weeds

and the last line of another mediocre poem.

                                                                        03.07.16