An Ending or Two

He's perched on the porcelain when he smells it.
Blue smoke bleeds through the cracks
around his bathroom door
nearly rattling its brass hinges
as it enters--searching, grasping.
That oracle on 40th and 9th
called it years back.
Both of them were in common form
though one managed to make sense.
He wishes, now motionless like quarry
pinched by steel, that he'd dropped
more money in that homeless man's hat.
He wishes for a lot of different outcomes.

But there's no smoke to smell
and no one's coming to get him.
It's another delusional daydream
set in place to pass the time.
Creative, they used to call it.
Now it's diagnosable.
He stands, rightly constipated
and almost forgets to dispel
the water he made.
He used to scold her
for not flushing
in her effort
to save the world
but now he'd love
to enter his bathroom
tainted by the faint stench of urine.
It'd help him remember
that there's still something left
worth saving.

The knot on his tailbone
throbs harder as he rubs it
wondering if he's devolving
like some Kafka creature--
an exacerbated exercise in karma.


Currently reading:
"'Salem's Lot" by Stephen King.