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mismatch.com

The alleged perp on the six o’clock news is your double
his eyes enhanced by Etch A Sketch
follow passersby like the eyes of Jesus
in the velvet images hawked on the boardwalk
by shell gamers whose rusted-out Lincoln Continentals
sport curb feelers and parking tickets
as a matter of principle.
Your bowl of ramen noodles looks lonely.
Your flask of Robitussen has lost its appeal.
You begin thumbing rides into perpetual darkness
forgetting the Magic of the Method
your posthumous publications falling far short
of morphing into the yellow Stutz idling curbside.
Your ashes drizzled along the backside of billboards
merge with the runoff ringing
the toenails of pedal pushers.
Tagged in Facebook
you are subjected to a full body patdown.
The frequent flyer miles stuffed into your Jockeys
irritate the metal detectives at the airport
and in a huff you one-eighty
without emptying your pockets
without cleaning the litter box.
Suddenly you’re being eulogized
as a metallic taste with an erectile dysfunction.
Your pajamas with their self-fulfilling prophesy
are slated to appear on Oprah in April
as part of the Cruelest Month Syndrome.
You never should have trusted them.
You never should have bought into
the slumdog millionare scam.
The devil behind the unpainted wall in your apartment
a master of the mini-diatribe
continues to egg you on
despite the Chapter 11 banging on the back door
replaying rook to queen eight
goading newhires into flagellation,
while you, awash with nuance, rue the day you moved in
under the pretext of repairing circuit breakers
as a born again pornographer.
Meanwhile Philip Glass appears at your table
in a sidewalk café in the American remake
of some European film starring Catherine Zeta Jones
and applies the Heimlich.
I guess it’s true what they say.