City Life

My job destroys me a little more every day,
but it's easy and the hours are short
and it pays the rent to the tiny basement suite
that I share with my friend who is not a friend
who smokes pot ten times a day
and stares into the video screen ten hours a day
that dominates the 500 square foot common space
and outside there are nothing but roads roads roads
and sometimes a hooker standing in the cold
and when I walk to the bus stop, I wonder
how there can be so many people driving by
one after the next after the next after the next forever,
and I can't even afford a car let alone the gas or the insurance
so I cannot get onto that road and drive far, far, away
from the anxiousness I feel every day
and the soul-crushing job that I swore when I was young
that I would never do, but I do
because it's easy and the hours are short
and anything more would kill me.



I must

remember

to breathe.


Breathe.