Comatose

This life is no dash to bait with seven eels.
I stand solemn as an actuary at an ashen lakeshore,
mercurial water sucking at my feet.
I have put my numbers to water
only to watch them sink.

Someone calls my name, an uncle, I think,
his voice a thread I fail to grasp.
I follow the thread only to find,
deep in the woods,
my rotund neighbor chasing his three boys
and cracking a lampcord whip.
He chides them while they circle,
kicking at his shins.

This life is dirty as any tango
bred in the Argentine ghetto,
the throbbing beat sexual.
I run down the rundown alleyways.
The air stinks of ammonia and booze.
I stand against the shadowy wall with lizards.

--Mitchell Hegman