Part Time / No Benefits

They flicker like millions of candles.

To remind me I have a pulse; while I play in- this brick monopoly.

Roll twice

Clean up on aisle “6”.

So I do it, so my son Dante can feel the hell with 7.50 an hour.

Mopping swirls of vomit from green drips of snot we call kids.

“Wax floors know no clarity.

Pass go, don’t collect 200

Breaking stale bread and grape juice at our last supper.

Laying on steel Tempur-Pedics sending cold drips of stress

down my back.

Power lines write out the 23rd psalms at night Saying “thou

anoint my head with oil”.

Praying I can wrap one of those lines around my neck to feel

some surge of power in my life.

Entering soup kitchens filled with dried bodies

watching those murmuring tales of the past.

Gracious hands serve you but in their minds it’s judgment day.

I saw some children play hopscotch on the boardwalk.

Others planted a garden with a Phoenix’s ashes.

While I lay on the deck

all I wanted was a get out of jail free card.