Pumpkin

Malaise like caked on dirt in February

On a hollow pumpkin teetering on a window sill

Gazing out of a two bedroom apartment

With jeans and socks scattered like accruements

Of abandoned concern with all the dresses left

Waiting for re-deployment into more robust closets

After an eventual phone call, marching orders

Or catastrophic intervention to re-adjust the

Gravitational forces off the balcony

In a fit of freedom from clock-locked referendums

To travel there and back like an automat pumping quarters for

Repetitive motion, put cheese in front the wheel to urge the

Rodent to run to keep the lights on, from day job to

Night fevers and chills blanking out the ceiling in a pit of black
Pills not even taken to feel the effects of knowing there is nothing

Left here in this shell, just an orange jack-face with crooked teeth

And a desperate maze of scuttled strands of amber pulp

Maybe someone will find this apartment preserved in perfect crust

With the television screaming and the blinds raised staring at

Nothing but this cities haze of smog and a life’s epilogue