the company wont pay
these machines must run on
through the powers of man
through the night and these
are not cheap
machines
ma’am

and unless you can afford
your sun will fall past
the horizon a last time
forever nighttime
forever more

(in this universe, far away
tim was unaware
of conspirators
itching for the bed on which
his mortality still lie
and of his mother’s love
being trodden upon
by the company
and the hospital)

and in this moment,
she noticed the ticking of
the clock for the first time
and with empty bank accounts
and an empty heart
she said goodbye.

the bills were payed
the car was running clean
the sun was high and shining
and so was tim
messages, on his phone
were full of things to do
full of wanting lovers
and not so full of shit
at this time tim was a member
of a higher type of being
and feeling a unique euphoria
touching the bottoms of a holy aura
his moderation might be questioned
but his spine was true
and at the top of the hill
speeding along felt just fine
but one even sure of grip
knows the old addage
“what goes up,
must come down”
and down he’d
go
just
like every
breathing minute.

he sat as a beggar and held
a shakey hand out to the princess

she gave him a slice of bread and
it was wonderful,
wonderful enough to well up tears
in his hungry eyes

but later, as the pangs began anew
in his lowly stomach, he saw
trough a thicket of bush

the princess
frolicking in baths
filled with the finest meals
with fat
smiling men

fat smiling men with fat ear to
ear smiles like they could die and
be happy
fat smiling men that could die a
happy death in pools of the
finest meals whose stomachs
would be full and souls would
be empty and so tim the beggar
moved on again

his hunger subsiding.

in room 104
in between rooms 103 and 105
he lay unconscious

if you walked from one room
to the next and to the next
like he did in his dreams
you’d see vacancy,
of all sorts
and you could imagine
people coming and going
all wrapped up and tight
like little springs

the doctors and hangers-on
discussed mortally while he
floated in his dream way
above their heads

but then

hadn’t he

always been

above their

heads?

he’d not find himself, tim
on this plane or any other
ever again
he’d never find himself ever again.

this is a room full of televisions
turned on and on and on and on the
same volume and on and on and on
different channels on and on and on and on
they play filling this soulless room

distorted
distopian
discordant
distant,
lost;
the colors flash and the sounds to
a trained ear tell you to run away

our protagonist friend and narrator
lies here emitting putrid electric waves
shaking up the air for no genuine reason

he’s just a television,
after all.