Thursday, August 18, 2016

poem of the day 08.18.16


as if lucifer rose

 

sometimes getting drunk

in the middle of the day in a bar is all right

 

but instead i’m in the grocery line

the scent of last night’s vodka sniffing through my nose

 

stuck behind another cotton-headed abomination

 

someone’s mother yes

someone’s grandmother

 

far off into the cold, carnal distance of the past

maybe the erotic love of someone’s life

 

though i doubt it

 

she’s standing in the middle of the lane

questioning the cost of every item to the cashier

 

why does the yogurt cost so much?

why the lemonade?

give me back those apples

i’m going to have to think about them

 

i can’t even get my groceries

on the little conveyor belt because she won’t move

from her incredulous consumptive perch

 

this is a small problem, true

 

there are wars

there is suffering

 

somewhere a thirteen year old girl

is being forced into the submission

of an arranged marriage

 

how we have an orange-faced

racist maniac running for president

 

but this is my problem

 

and i think about bukowski and the shoelace

how it’ll be the small stuff that gets you in the end

not nuclear war or authoritarianism

 

or about how i’d still need to buy

toilet paper in the event of national socialism

 

this woman is my shoelace

 

checking the expiration on the milk for the third time

complaining about the cost of butter for the second time

leaving the line to go and get a bigger bag of rice

like she left the line to go and get some new apples

 

this is no bar in the middle of the afternoon

hiding in the dark, getting drunk

as assholes make their way outside in the sun

 

she is no human being

 

she’s a beast, standing there examining her receipt

so that the cashier can’t even ring up my shit

 

as if lucifer rose from hell

this fine summer day

to buy coffee on sale and some rotisserie chicken

 

or to screw with a guy like me

hungover and in need of seltzer

so he can go home and hit the bottle

 

make his world’s suffering end.

 

                                                           

 

 

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