Post Mortum

All hail the Crash bang of the calculator!
Sum totaling our net worth-
figuring out if we can eat tonight,
tomorrow, the next day.
Figuring out if we’ll celebrate your birthday,
Christmas, get married,
afford children, repair shitty cars
and shitty apartments,
or operate on subtle malignancies.
We rise from tired old mattresses,
rinse beneath rusty showerheads,
put on dirty clothes and drive still asleep
to punch in
punch out
and give it all back to the unappeased mother,
the absent deadbeat drunkard of a father.
The cruel and misreant machinery in the blue suit
behind the podium on election day-
all the while the boots go crushing,
stamping out our hipster drifter doppelganger flame.
Pin us down beneath the weight of expectations,
the weight of obligation,
the illusion of responsibility.
Our life light dimmed by the proffer of a door,
its darkness inking the town
like a sudden thumbprint.