slab raze paint fumes drive us from the office twenty minutes in. i can feel the volatile organic compounds burning the back of my throat. daring me to cough. so. away from the uneven stereo panning that gives me an air conditioner's complaints on the left and the grunts and groans of passing cars on the right. back to the green couch with a bum leg. back to my own laptop with its four corroded keys and the small cloud that sits in the center of the space bar. these doctors are so inept they've invented their own language of errors. their fingers forge phrases that have never passed through the soft palate of any living thing. their sloppy typing and suspect grammar won't stop us from getting this man some money to offset the wreckage of his right hip. then to the european market, where men without souls scream at bricks of cheese and women who look like my mother if she let herself go grey buy slabs of walnut cake. i tried it once. it tasted like melted styrofoam. two images i can't shake: a construction sign abandoned at the side of the road. a dark arrow wearing orange clothes, its indifference aimed at the ground. and a neighbour's toilet, comatose on her front lawn, turned on its side so it won't asphyxiate on its own vomit. as if it has anything left to give. 220718 what's it to you? who go blather from