HOW TO CLEAN URINE OUT OF A MATTRESS
Subtract that last carafe of wine
from the mounting pile of blunders, each one jagged,
rock-like but somehow also viscous, slipping through cupped hands.
If I had a vine’s instinct to snake through those invisible windows
of negative space created by fences or whatever infrastructure exists
in said vine’s proximity, then I wouldn’t be here, contemplating my body’s waste.
I’d be at the beach with my friends, letting the sun dote on me until it burns my flesh.
But there is meditation hidden in every rote task, grounding in the extrasensory
experience of pulling a spray bottle’s plastic trigger, methodically expelling
its acidic contents over the pungent rorschach blot of your disappointment,
skirting its perimeter with quick bursts until the deep amber stain is coaxed
a stormy grey, congruent with your mindscape’s ambient synaptic buzz.
Plans to curtail excess, déjà vu of desperations past,
a color catalogue of let downs flip books
through your intellect and projects onto that warm
conspicuous blob your unconscious urethra leaked
onto the mattress like an anatomical saboteur.
