The mirror likes
to laugh at me while I am
shaving. It starts working
on my inadequacies at night,
after my teeth have been
brushed, mulling over some
crushers for me in the morning.

I trundle down my stairs
and step over the animal
that lives in my box.
It sees me merely as a food machine
that magically produces
hard, crunchy edibles from a magical
beast trapped in the closet.

Traffic slowly passes as
I try to fix my tire again.
Jovial metal wagons race by
with giggling Mattel college
creatures hanging from
windows that mom covered
with a "loan".

Work greets me with
stern gray face and
a pho-brick
snarl.

It opens it's mouth and swallows me into a gray cube and gray chair,
it's claim department digestive
plumbing slowly burns away my
passion, regurgitating
me in 2 hour intervals, so that I will ply myself with nicotine
and keep myself to weak to run.

A final dry heave splatters me
onto the parking lot where my
conveyance awaits it's keys,
coughing and hurling mechanical
profanity from it's engine block
while I stand on it's pedal and
scream.

Home is a blur of 19 inch
theater. Oh Pat Sajak is brilliant
Sanford seemed to be going this time
and the commercials keep me young and supple.

Dinner is green and brown with a
questionable off-white...maybe clear
...I think it's cheese, a
subtle accompaniment of a brown
bready cube and corn that is far to
costly to make this shape.

And as my mirror has it's
last laugh on me and the light is
snuffed out
I ask the question we all
belittle ourselves with before
dozing into our belligerent comas:

"I have kept my faith,
but where has faith kept me?"