$5,000 Oxygen machine

Nicholas M. Coulombe

There are two stout bodied genderless dwarves.

with beards.

hand pumping a mine-cart down

subway tracks in Boston.

I Hear their rattling cart wheels

along iron bar tracks.

the crackling fire of a lit torch

Illuminating the wooden planks

and an obvious macguffin

in the side of the tunnel.

a glimmering cracked rock.

This vision

is a testament to my attention to detail

during tunnel vision.

the minecart slows to a screaching stop

by the pull of a break lever.

the dwarves zelda bomb their way inside

Shattering the glimmering rock macguffin into a cascade of pixelated shrapnel.

through a dark tunnel

Torch held in front of them

Leaving the minecart by the tracks.

there is bed ridden naked man

the size of a mountain

bypap machine fixed like a gas mask

umbilical cord tether to a television

He is asleep

balancing three remote, two cell phones and a bacon sasauge egg and cheese breakfast sandwhich from burger king on his belly.

A roll of paper towels sits under neath his head.

And he appears to not have a penis.

they aren't sure if he is a unick, or if it is just hidden beneath all of the fat.

He wakes up and asks what time it is

He looks at his watch before they can answer and interupts them.

It is 4:00am.

the dwarves confirmed it was in fact 4 am.

He trusts his wristwatch to tell time

it was over $5,000 dollars.

He trusts this watch

about as far

as he can throw his money away.

which is to say

He collects watches.

Tell me.

is this man living? 

When you tell me it is selfish to raise a child of my own I remember taking care of this man.

holding the urinal to the spot his penis would be.

how he always told me god loved what I was doing but hated where I've been.

tubes of oxygen up our noses.

can we rip out the catheder

save, with Will power

somehow this

eugenic honey

royal bee jelly to change our whole genetic makeup into something else.

could we see a world without screens

walk in the forest again

see snow, see sun, 

See a coyote eat your face.

Once.

it would be real at least. 

The pain.

makes you wanna stop taking pills 

we label our comittments

addiction

I'm stuck constantly in tunnel vision

in place of numbing my body, I just don't let myself pay any attention to the pain.

smoke and mirrors

just looks like life

I'm going fast down these tracks

I was always told to hold my breath when I passed through fog 

to pay the spirits respect

I've been holding my breath a long time.

the fog hasn't moved.

This mountain of a man

told me to ask the man on the mountain.

to save me from hell

So I could keep helping the world.

I laughed.

it never occurred to me 

that the fog in my head 

was smoke 

until now.

how a crackling torch is more honest looking than a cell phone.

I would prefer hell So long as I don't need to bring

my god damned cell phone.

I decided to dig down,

If This is hell

I must be at the earths molten core, 

the road up 

as long in any direction

so long as I went straight.

I curved.

I still haven't hit the surface

I keep building boulders to keep the rats out.

I make them obvious, glimmering macguffins so adventurers will Zelda bomb them open

find me sitting here

watching the world go round without me

losing track of wine

checking my wrist.

in place of an expensive clock 

beautiful, free and biological.

The ticking is loud

I'm deaf to the humming

of my oxygen machine.

the television,

screeching mine carts

My front door

blown open by Zelda bombs.

I'm stagnant

my dreams and a metronome

Counting

the day I hate this television enough

to turn it off

Trust this flesh enough to turn it back.

hear the screeching subway

whirring of my bi-pap,

bombs going off

all over the world.

opening my eyes to see life here isn't a bomb shelter.

Fuck salvation. 

I am going to paint clocks melting in hell-fire.

eat non-perishables ironically

and Die an honest man.