i subsist on
coffee and sorrow
and this morning
even my coffee maker
gave up on me
leaving nothing
but anxiety to fill
the tired places
where all i have
is silent reverie
dismantling my
tender into a
caricature of my
own bitter failings

planning another
excursion for work
a traveling sideshow
of bleak americana
a blank canvas to
scribble these
morose meanderings
over new vistas
of the same insipid
nightmare reality
an impoverished soul
starving to death
over a foreign hell
in sundered demise

there is whirpool
drawing plumes of
brackish water down
to dissolve the
salt pillars barely
keeping me upright
a full collapse
in streaming slurry
a broken coffee maker
sitting sorrowfully
as i pack my bags
to take these miseries
into the flatlands
of central texas