I just spilled a pot full of pennies from a top shelf down onto the floor. It made a terrific racket.

I heard the upstairs neighbors, probably fast fast asleep the instant before, suddenly scurrying around, madly woken up from peacable slumbers, or maybe peacably woken up from mosquito-infested torpor.

This business, as I know, of paying rent on a pod in a community mausoleum for the living comes with the echos of notice that my 1:30am noises reverberate less predictably but no less reliably than those damn car alarms that used to blast off all through the night.

I woke up feeling motivated and distracted but as the day wore on I felt weathered and confused.

Here is a poem I wrote at the bar tonight while the single alcoholic girls looked at me with a mix of curiosity and selfish disdain (which was mutual):

Mothers Day.
I walked toward
the window and
felt that dark
little opening
look at me. Like
a wedge, a
familiar crutch.
A feeble crutch.
No crutch at all.
I heard a radio
say that a mom
is the backbone
of a good man.
I laughed:
Of what is my
backbone made?