Having a cigarette
instead of lunch
because the time it takes the microwave
to heat a cup of soup is equal to the time
it takes to walk out front and back and
still catch the last fifteen minute
chunk of paternity tests,
littering day time television like
half smokes in the cracks people walk
when they've important places to be and
time enough to complain along the way,
of course, minus
lukewarm soup
pretending to be garden roast garlic aujou
with real steak
coming up Campbell's
in swallowed burps hours later.
The television
by itself
goes quietly into the white noise of the day.
Picking poisons
can be an art form and
today I am Beat.
