The problem
with daylight, like
it’s been on since
dawn (see?) crack
of, and
billabong
of garbage men
having come
and gone for six
long hours now like
it’s two in the after
noon, I really
ought to be
writing about garbage
men woke me into guilt, like
clattering metal lids, battering
ram of hydraulics
and embryonic
daylight … oh, I suppose
the problem with daylight
like like
pancake batter dripping
off an earnest brow, like
pretending
it matters,
going up
in wood smoke
fragrance of all
pretentious
tropes; scotch whistle
from a cherry Slurpee
straw, brain stem stirs
egg yolk, sopping it up
with sourdough; the fifth
cup of redundant java,
trembling hams,
unnecessary toke.
The problem and you
might agree, it’s me
writing notes
in this accursed
box, for the world
to see, a dollar
late, figures and
failures all finding
niche, fizzures, apropos
of sick fifty-ish mall cops
and mail carriers,
by day it’s
the stevedores
with a real problem, like
tight on Drambuie, peach
schnapps at two
in the afternoon;
meanwhile
I’m so flush with like
five hundred
friends I’ll
never know
in this life, not lonely
per se, only weary
of the self
replicating
like daylight, probably
should have quit it
by now, evaded
these insipid phrases,
kept shut like
the mouth to sleep
till it keeps over
night.
— Dennis Mahagin