Waste by waste by waste

I had a poem

but I forgot it

inside your mouth.

Years later,

when I crumbled

into cookies and

from them too

and when the sun

fell more often than it rose

and when my hair

slipped to gray

to nothing,

I’m told

you spat it out as

vomit.

*

A sun collapses

over a large lipped hat

that tips a face

to the shade

and to the solace of eyes

that find tucked away things

that would rob your breath

until you are left with cigarette smoke

or a burn of the lighter

or a mark that’s there

but not there for there

is there where there is,

and nowhere else.

*

Shit climbs

into my living room

from a bathroom that has not been cleaned

by a person who is not clean

because of a night that was not clean

from a kitchen that soaked up dirt

and excess

and promised customers that

when engorged on filth and oil and fat

that sizzles and licks

and drools itself into saliva,

with laughs and stains and sweat

oozing into a mass,

with hair droppings,

spit drippings,

mucus dribblings,

one doesn’t have to feel good about themselves.

Instead one must pound away,

find a narrow crawlspace

that can double as a bedroom,

and tug, tug, tug,

until duties call

and waste becomes waste becomes waste

waste by waste by waste

while the end comes, goes,

and where is the food?

Is there too much oil?

Is there a bathroom here?