And I thought my life was in a piss pot.
Will you marry me Bill?
I love you so and always will.
Cut the crap, idiot.
Talking to myself,
I wallow in a syzygy of self-loathing –
my inability to do things,
like fix the muffler on my car
or the hole in my roof
or save a drowning city.
Manmade malfeasance
trapped thousands of people
in Bill’s town when the water rose
suffocating my Jazzy Town, the whole world’s
Fatty Tuesday Town.
It’s hap’nin’ on the TV, death.
It’s hap’nin’ on the street, stench.
Is Bill a refugee or an evacuee
or just fucked-up?
I’m on your side, Bill,
when you are losin’.
I’d never scheme or lie, Bill,
there’s been no foolin’.
Wait! I found his picture
on the Internet,
a non-wedding event.
“Committed to a perpetually unmarried life.”
Bill’s words. We’ve never met,
but Bill and his non-wife look happy, in love.
Feeling voyeuristic,
I lurk around Bill’s party
on display to anyone with a search engine.
Tho’ uninvited I yell,
“Get all your stuff and get out!
The flood’s comin’!”
Pixel faces smile back mute.
My link to Bill sank
into a pestilential superfund swamp.
Bill must have got out before
THE LEVEES IN NEW ORLEANS BROKE.
Poor people dyin’ – nothin’ new there.
Poor animals dyin’ – nothin’ new there.
No way would I abandon my dog Winnie,
well, not on purpose.
Sure, Winnie runs off
every time the front door is open,
but that’s no reason to desert her.
My dumb dog doesn’t deserve to
drown in filth or die of thirst.
No one I know’d have anyone in their life,
if loyalty’s based on bein’ sharp 24-7.
Kisses and love won’t carry me.
Come on and marry me Bill!
Not even six feet of shit can silence
a song or bury a city called New Orleans.
Seriously,
where the hell is Bill?

C. Reeder ©2005