This week I have been mostly petrified,
and in between such periods I have been jelly.
Do you remember the action of freeze and thaw?
Surely you do, it’s the one clear spot
in the fogged grey landscape of your old school geography.
Well that is the state of me.
I am eroding.

When this process began I cannot tell,
I only know that it continues.

I like to think that the fragments of my self
are at least collecting somewhere,
perhaps in my socks.
If I had the will I might tip out the sediment nightly
and store it in a glass jar by the bed.

I am of course losing weight,
though not so much weight as gravitas.
Conventional scales won’t register the change
as I have tried to explain to my doctor,
but he smiles the smile of an indulgent uncle
then writes me another little green ticket
for little blue pills.

When the last essential ballast is crumbled and gone
Into that that jar, nicely striped,
my substance will rise
like a cheap balloon, leaving
something empty and indifferent
and insensitive.

Hooray is what I say!
I, or that thing that is I minus self,
might at last succeed by blundering on into money regardless,
by making the right decisions.
Judgement is right because there’s no backchat inside
to say otherwise.

Bring it on.