I’m drinking a beer,
an oatmeal stout,
that comes in a bottle
with gold foil over the cap.
It seems like an old-fashioned
idea
of premium beer,
whereas now,
the fancy beers are canned
adorned with images
that could pass for tattoos
But too, what I envision
a tattoo looking like
in the digital age
a stamp of independence,
works of art, rather
than the age when tattoos
were for sailors and criminals
and sorority hazing.
Anyway, who gives a shit about any of that.
My daughter is having trouble getting to sleep, so she shouted my name. She shouted my name until she cried and moaned and continued shouting my name. I asked her what she needed. She replied “I need something”.
While my body is here, my mind is back in the basement, where a cloud of marijuana creates mists on the edge of my vision. I’d taken it upon myself to open and empty all the boxes on the utility shelf in the little workroom. Loose screws, bolts, pastes, tapes, rat traps, extension cords, insulation. Where should it all go? How should I organize it? What can I throw away?
When all is said and done, I’ll have thrown away very little, but thinned the overall containers of the shelf, and the place where it resides in my mind. It’s like a form of housekeeping bulimia.
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