A Quick Succession of Busy Nothings

I usually solve problems by letting them devour me.
— Franz Kafka
 
I am driven to the grocery store, my skin as white
as the snow still to come. I load up my reusable plastic
tote bags with TV dinners of many kinds in the frozen aisle.
I do not cook for myself, am overweight, my belly
peaks out of my one green t-shirt.
The trees are all teeth and they chew me like cud.
I'm watching Mad Men, I like it so far.
How about frozen Mexican? It'll be Halloween soon.
I'm Charlestoning from head to toe right out of my life.
I'm sick of poetry, I'm lying fallow, abstractions bore me,
I'll never write again. Apologies to Anne Carson,
but I can't fall in love with wolves or with sheep.
It's all ice in sawdust these days. A word of advice:
Never say anything you'll live to regret
because Apology's a Currency no one accepts.
Noon strikes like a glove. Everything is so expensive now,
living and eating, waking and sleeping,
　　　　　　　but luckily we all live in a hologram,
so I'm comforted my hunger is only a loquacious illusion.
Let's sit still and pretty, pretend it's not price-gouging.
I see myself in Pete Campbell, I'm proud and indignant.
In my mind's eye, I am a thin and glamorous woman
in a red bell-coat and white muff (I'm five percent bisexual).
Come on, take the cat out of the hummingbird's mouth.
Inside me is a forest of bronze mirrors, glass rods and lumber,
spruce violins, two-man toothed bowstrings making music,
sawing wood. Is that what festers beneath my burlap skin?
My conversations with people are menial and stupid.
I’ve stopped asking for others to witness me.
I peel myself each morning and devour my own rind.
I'd like for my tongue to start speaking without filler words.
War is everywhere, nearly anywhere,
　　　　　　　and it is a golden, somnolent autumn.
I step out of the store without paying for my food.
A siren starts wailing, but I am right out
and never caught. Am driven home in oblivious silence.