“Pprrpffrrppfff.”
—James Joyce
I just want to write a poem
so that I’ll have something
to wipe my ass with
after taking a painful dump
before my graveyard shift
at the Piggly Wiggly.
I don’t know what’s worse:
this writer’s block
or this constipation.
There was once a time
when men closed their eyes
& pictured my body
as naked as a blank page.
Now look at me,
shuffling out of the stall
through the shadow
of the valley
of twink death
with my $200 jeans
around my ankles, hot shit
leaking out of my crack,
licking the back
of my grizzled ballsack
like a garter snake
made of melted jasper.
Then there’s the sound
of my boss barging in,
hell-bent on firing me
for being thirty
seconds late for work.
As soon as he finds me
squatting over the sink
& drenched from performing
an ass-backwards baptism,
he gouges out his eyes
& exchanges them
for two rotten lemons.
But enough about him.
I’m still here, trapped
between two parallel mirrors,
where I’ll take a final selfie
to immortalize my mortality.
There’s nothing wrong
with wallowing in abjection
while walled in
by the reflections
of the reflections
of the reflections
of the reflections
of the reflections
of the reflections
of the reflections
of infinitely many
(incrementally smaller)
Michael Washingtons,
all praying for one thing:
a second chance
to die young.
& something tells me
God is trying to
tell me something
because nothing says
“It’s time to grow up”
like saying nothing.