milking
I am milkman
deep in the mud
filling every syllable
with detritus
after emotion has bled out
and heaved its guts into the street —
yet I am only there to take notes
with pencil-stubs
leering
greedy for more detail
to prick and prod
every bruise and pinch like the small-time
fatcat
office hero
whose very touch will taint
and linger
with the half-life
of high-grade plutonium,
I am there only
with cameras for eyes, see them snap down
on every colour
now
leeching it all while developing, reducing everything
to something so much less
than before
right down to just
a few pecks at the keyboard
so that later,
I can spit it all across the screen
or the page, and maybe the internet too
so that strangers might find some shred of similarity
or maybe
just pass right on by
with not even a snicker but instead a heroic measure
of indifference
ten-tonnes of something better to do
until I realise that I got so fucking dirty
now for nothing
so I know that what I wrote
I stole from myself
and
had to force myself to not care
about that, get the fuck over that
fast, real fast
and know that what I felt
then (and now) was always going to be canon
fodder
for a couple of bucks
here and there
