the root

the man across from me
has a mouth full of boring
it’s slopping out the sides
like egg salad
while his wife chews silence
like jerky

i’m drinking ice water and hot coffee
waiting for something special to happen
while this heat pours down
even through the summer rain

we all age in different flavours
bitter
sweet or
oak-barrelled like wine
and all the words we’ve had to eat
are buried in our jowls
and the pockets around our eyes
house the years of
crystallized tears
and the freckles we accumulate
become like capital cities
and highway towns
and our skin grows softer and coarser
creased where it folds over and over
we are maps and storage facilities
when we die
tiny bugs carefully catalogue our various stories
and pile them in categories
amidst the tree roots and quarries

but the boring man knows nothing of this
so he’s having an affair
with a girl like fresh berber carpeting
and his wife jerks off to youporn videos
of german women fucking appliances

this is not to say that there is anything wrong with these decisions
but if i were an earthworm

i might object

filing so many particles

in the same room

perhaps this is the root of our environmental disaster