Casualties of the Times: Washing Machine

Washing Machine


You get home
Peeling the smell off
A hot shower will be needed
But you can’t quite climb the stairs
And you don’t think they heard you enter
Oh, that’s right, nobody’s here
Well, perhaps it’s for the better
You’ve been strong for a whole year

Good as new
Just like it never happened…

Listening
Listening to the washing machine
Listening
Listening to the washing machine
To the washing machine

Turn on the water
Steam’s thick cause it’s a cold night
And you left the window open
A moth circles overhead
Like a dying tattered halo
Damp, it falls to your bare beast
And you catch it at your navel
Its weak legs kick in your hand
Like the corners of your mouth when he said to smile

Good as new
Just like it never happened…

Listening
Listening to the washing machine
Listening
Listening to the washing machine
The washing machine
The spinning
The trembling of the washing machine
The washing machine
The pounding
The kicking of the washing machine
The washing machine

Sitting on the cold white metal lid
Crumpled like a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon
Your guts feel hollow, like they’re rotting out
And your head feels like it’s full of cotton balls
White never seemed such a dirty color before
Now it screams of stain, like iodine yellow
Needing Nina Simone all over your living soundtrack
Saying it’s all right
Saying you’ve got life
A cigarette butt
Cigarette burn
Your mouth is dry
The room slowly turns
With the second hand
With the minute hand
With the hour hand
And the celestial hands
But never our hands to meet through the fourth wall
So the scene complete
The canvas hangs, displaying your defeat
In a menagerie of humanity…

Spectators leave your suffering
Feeling more alive, twice as saintly
And cleansed, exit the gallery
Back to their lives for what they be
For what they be!


February 9, 2008