“You’re in five colors/you inspire my mind” — Arcade Fire

Today the black and white speckle of the flooring
Is more of a splatter, the desk handles gleam
bold and cheap and hateful
like a Big Lots knife set from your aunt at Christmas, the
bright blue Ethernet cable snakes in piles
like electric nooses, the bookshelf sits dust-coated and empty,
splotchy red, an infected mouth, and the children’s voices,

God, their stupid voices,
giving asinine explanations to each other
for why things are cheaper in Mexico,
twitterpated over Snapchat tiddies,
threatening to piss in their seats,

they tumble over my eardrums
bodies
slamming into windshields. Last Friday
this was a tolerable mass
of bland and comfortable squalor,
banal,
something I could endure; Monday,

well,
there’s a difference
between a corpse and a body,
and this place is fit
for only one of those things. Now I’m stuck
in this skin
chaffing against the rough surface
of such a mean structure,
wondering why
I asked you do this to me
yet again.