there’s some coffee still left in the pot,
there’s still some ketchup on the plate,
there’s a shit ton of words left unsaid,
and despite what the news says,
there’s still life to be wasted for another array of decades
made to facilitate the images, words, and creatures
of an estate gone wrong and rotten, for the eldritch to sing their tune
gas station sushi tastes a lot better
with homemade bbq sauce that some twentysomething hipster
made in their bathroom accidentally while trying to make moonshine
but getting the proportions wrong and so they salvage what they can
by dumping as much ketchup and white vinegar and other spices
till they get moonshine bbq
leaking through their tub,
into the foundation of their Airbnb house
they rented for the summer
while scrounging enough money to go to Whole Foods
for some better sushi
to make the whole damn thing make sense or die trying
who can blame the stars for wanting to diminish
as they grow old
possibly frail, definitely lonely,
on the outskirts of existence hitting boneless pavements made
from quarks dipped in infinite blackness,
gathered together,
and released
Fred Aiken Writing 