18 Years of God Damn Bullshit: A Memoir

Body of Bones

My cart rattles and sighs like something exhumed

This is my workplace, my second home

Here, it is tired and still 

Stale coffee among stale breaths

Organic matter paused

The clock ticks, and slowly, the stacks decompose

Oozing into aisles, they urge you to tend to them

Pick them up off the floor like a savior

Night nurse, make your rounds today

Keep them breathing and show them how

To live, and keep living, even if the time is borrowed

Lend them your spine and put your back into it

Your knees do not last long in this profession

It is a pleasure to aid old words in surviving

A virtue, knowing something will outlive your worn body

Their aching, is your aching

Your breath, their breath

Exhale into them life

Your lungs, do not last long in this profession

Leave them something they can gnaw on

Like a senile hound left home alone

They remember your smell long after you’ve gone

It is a promise to return to them and their house of old

So they leave you a place, for your body of bones