A full day of work
Working late so you can take a day off
All the pieces for a moment gathered up in your tired fingers — like maybe you’ve got a handle on things.
The guy shoving a clipboard into your face tells you you’re a loser when you subway walls glaring yellow. Shake your head no; you slip down the cement steps through the dripping-ceiling labyrinth while he yells, “look at yourself in the mirror! look at yourself in the mirror! look at yourself in the mirror!”

You think
you think you’ll text chat your internet provider and get a lower rate
you don’t
you are kind of rude not so funny as you jab
to some poor kid who’s only following the stupid orders that allow him a space to sleep and a few crumbs to chew.
So then you’re a jerk
but you don’t quite catch on until it is too late
and your heart rate’s gotten so high over nothing
and the sins of your life concentrate into this one sticky spot and congeal there like pig fat
and you don’t know how to deal

Tiffany in the mall
with some skinny guys in tank tops arms wide beetle-backed narrowed eyes and fish-mouths forward, holding back a merry tame crowd

Epicurus suggesting that the gods are too blessed and eternal to bother with us but we still of course want to pay them meet adoration,
And we’ll still not betray a friend because that would confound our whole being.
When you’re 20 you think that’s all kind of weak
When you’re 40 you think that you were at 20 not noticing yourself or anyone else.
When you’ve become 42 you think there’s only one hope: that God forgives and uplifts us all sooner rather than later.

AW/BW

copyright AM Watson September 21, 2019