Poetry | Fred Aiken Writing

time is the girlfriend that keeps racking up one large bill after another

always telling me she’ll slow down, that this is the last Gucci whatever she will buy,

all the while I know she’s getting ready for another coke-fueled night of spending me dry,

curled over on the couch hoping that one day it will stop

while also being too afraid to leave myself,

hoping, against hope, against sanity, with some sort of masochistic delight,

that the torture continues into the night into the morning into the year into the decade,

until one day I wake up, completely spent, decrepit, in horrible credit card debt,

but still grateful that time keeps kicking me over and over, begging her not to stop

anarchists fleeing from bombarded ships flooded

in the streets,

made momentous by continuous momentum stirring

through veins, collapsed cityscapes scrapped from being listed

by settlers sleuthing organic matter falling from histrionics

of volcanic heights, stopped in the middle of the street,

to the noise of half-thought-out sentences sprayed

and sanitized with Lysol wipes

quipped from the deleterious effects of deletantes led to dinner in

a feast meant for a king and

adorned by peasants creating their own credit card debt out of thin

air, high above the sea, grooves of the peninsula sharpening

out of the remnants of what’s left in the streets

as anarchists flee, flex, boil to the surface on segues trailing intrigue

catching fire from thoughtless arsonists atop buildings built by martyrs

from a slim, but slimming margin cut

from the bone, right to the plate,

delicious to eat

but nothing to pray

a thematic structure built entirely out of stale Cheerios stuck to the roof of my mouth

as I sing out moans of insomnia blurred by an ancient Sankrit etched into the side of my skull

allowing for small gold fishes to pass through on their way to school

to learn that they are not cows, nor do they grave,

yet they understand what day they’ll be let out of their cages to uncover

the great mystery of their life, that I suck at taking care of fishes, but I’m okay with eating them

Fred Aiken Writing