Recommendations

Pseudonymous club lights taste like the rum & Diet Coke 

in my cup: saccharine, tainted. You don’t have to worry about

getting sick 

if you’re already dying. Under some boy’s thrifted neon sign

I look like a skull with nice lips, but at least the same principle 

of physics applies to an abandoned Starbucks cup on a Toyota

roof.

Let your coffee go cold with the metropolitan October,

oak trees losing leaves like baby teeth. Tuck your sanity under a

pillow 

& call it perennial adolescence. 

When breathing in secondhand smoke, don’t let anyone see

you cough. To shatter the illusion is to fail at being a little better 

than everyone else: a second rate eulogy. Double-knot shoes 

& make an epigram out of the laces. Learn your lesson, 

never memorize it. A clock’s minute hand is your enemy. 

The hour hand would be your friend if you asked, 

but opt for a digital watch instead. Numbers don’t point fingers 

or trouble you with the realization that there’s something

hedonistic 

about striving for self-improvement.