Mandated Exposure to Disposable Meth Labs

I step lightly through the door without

rhythm of belonging. Superiors

search me for Familiar deception. But

I know they welcome each sunrise with a

staggered line of problems who check in at

the desk – they have made me a clone of the

reasons their cadence stays contemptuous,

unbroken from reprimand toward even

toes still in line. I’m one more insubordinate

soldier of their streets; the streets they throw me

onto with the Familiars they have

adopted for me. I’m not the risk of

a lesser society. I have purpose

far greater than the man with ebony

phonics who wears boxers at the waist where

his jeans should sit but don’t. And never do.

Far greater than the woman, pregnant, her

child writhes in the womb from withdrawal of

trash cooked on a spoon. She told me. And she’s

one reason for the recurring, droned

deliverance I memorized from the

front-man in bibbed overalls. He sighs

personal cost of touching burnt, hosed soda

bottles discarded to the dirt: ain’t no

use tryin’ ah find indulgence, he says,

what’s left is poison. What’s left behind is

residual hope of dopamine’s soft

song – the stage performance for ones who have

misplaced their own rhythm of belonging

driven by clarity. I am a brain

in a dead sea of crank and ill judgments.

I’m a toiler trapped to traipse behind turtles.

I am the center of harassment

usages Webster doesn’t know, and

neither do I. A plus’ from well-constructed

theses past manifest like phantoms

thrashing behind peeled yellow wallpaper.

In spite of Jane, in spite of Jane, I can

see myself outside, drifting through freedom,

but I sit thigh to thigh in this van with

all the Familiars who choose to release

and repeat. So why am I the one

picking up shreds of dead birds? Why should I

step where burnt-bottle meth labs

are disposed? I’m the one who packs carrots

for lunch. I don’t belong exposed to this

malevolence. I know far too many

accredited usages to sit in

silence against the naw-means and modern

tongue clicks as I wait to be let out

onto the next low shoulder. Clatter of

colossal ignorance can cloud over

my seat and let rain wash away ill

confidence. I’ll play my role of miscreant

until the curtain closes on my act’s

finale. And when it opens again,

what will be left is the poison.