we all carry weights
thinking we'll be strong
and better off
for it
if we identify with something
at least we won't be
nothing
and alone
even if that something
has no business
being
and for all the causes and
effects
of modernity
and the mechanistic approach
the mind continues to be
the heavyweight
champion
we can't choose
deep down
yet we can choose to choose
as long as there's
no doubt

life is about the small concessions
we make to friends and family
my niece, twenty, turns and says
"uncle, you need a style makeover"
so she gifts me a sweater for Christmas
"alright", I said
so now I wear it
I suppose if it was as easy
as changing clothes
even I would have figured it out
by now
I hope she doesn't get too sad
when she figures out
it's not enough
herself

nothing quite smells like
fresh wastewater in the morning
they wanted me at the treatment plant
hovering over a pump that gave up
and knows better than all of us
that moving **** around is just a temporary fix
they want me over the sensor
that gave up in solidarity with the pump
and needs a bigger skin care routine
than all the women I've ever seen
the electric Peugeot van to get there
who only does the speed limit
also knows better than me
that there is no rush
to risk our lives
the **** will still be there
they want me at the meetings
it's important that we know what we're all doing
we wouldn't want to treat the ****
more than it needs to be
though I suspect the real reason
we're all there on a Monday
is so we don't feel completely alone
when we have to be
all the other days

you scroll on tiktok while taking a ****
I write poetry
and scroll too
and read
productive as fluids leave
and art and boredom creep in
the answer to the age old question
of why men spend so long in the bathroom
most men don't know what to do
and I pretend too
as our assess speak to one another
via our sewage connection system
the farts whisper softly
"no matter how much you try to forget"
"you are this stinking imperfect body"

I had been a citizen for three years
and after the millions spent on me
in welfare and expensive medical machines
it felt like they were more desperate
than me
"no he can't die yet"
"we have to fix him"
"he owes us more than forty five years"
"of labor and taxes"
maybe the economy will crumble
maybe they'll name a recession after me
and curiously
now I feel I owe them something
though I'm not sure what
a billion of half-me's already frozen
for ten years in the clinic
ought to have them covered
in case all those CT scans, MRIs, and chemo
don't quite cut it

"oh, you've shaved your head"
she said
"new look?"
"yeah"
I replied
"I call it: non-seminoma"
"I now belong to that rare club"
"must be fun"
she snorted
"it is"
and I was glad at least
she was not a gravedigger

anxiety, my
mistress, my
muse
never enough for
panic
always there like
static
the buzz around the
brain
the biting of all the
nails

yes, I have done more
from this anxiety
than most people do
in their whole life, but
it was forced, not natural
like driving with the handbrake on
pedal to the metal
in this crash course
until the car unalives
and there's only a ghost