Went to bed early, for me, after a day of exhaustion

This darkness, I thought at one point,

either the black

that proverbially comes just before dawn

or a tasteless prelude to the darkness that goes on

as dark now as 1,000 years from now.  

A fucker with a kennel of power tools

started barking under my window

a few hours later,  

put an end to that right away

A packet of poems arrives in the box

I read them throughout a wasted day

during which, at one point in my paralysis,

I wonder about medication  

medication I know to be a crock

based on false tests,

creating as much misery as it purports to cure

enriching powerful

multi-billion dollar snake oil operations.

In the poems a worldview  

Amazing, really, since the poet is a kid  

I find myself writing in the guy’s cadence  

what next, that MacArthur I’ve been banking on?