Lazy
I’m feeling lazy today,
so bring on the doughnuts, fire a
taser into my sluggish grin
and load my depressive lungs
with car fumes.
There are six flies giving birth
on the tip of my nose
and I’m too lazy to
draft them
into the inferno
of my baggy dungarees.
I can’t connect
with my smooth, doughy
child
as he climbs up my leg
and demands a pesto salad
from the bowels of the earth.
I’m too lazy to
douse the floor
with pig’s blood
as I lose my voice to cigarettes
and drown in a puddle of vodka Red Bull.
My boy just sits on my lap
staring
like an inverted moon
in a refrigerator sky.
I’m lazy
no amount of caffeine
can help—
please, waterboard me
with lemonade
and break my back
with a bag of soft potatoes.
I’m lazy
I’m calling in sick because
I never work in the rain.
I’m a limp leash without a dog,
in a field of aviator shades.
I’ve got chores to do—
I’ll crush them with a
murderous fingerprint,
then you’ll find me in a corner
not speaking.
I can’t eat or sleep
in this Perspex dungeon
that is my garden shed.
I’m losing weight—
I look like a scuba diver
made of wax
shaped by moths
in a haze of Magic
8 Balls.
Look at me and my idle fidget—
I’m not cut out to sail
on this crystal ship through
a row of diseased telephones.
I didn’t stand a chance:
my ancestors crawled
three-minute miles
like addicts wired on WD-40,
and they were bone idle too.
©2024 Tim Frank All rights reserved.
Tim Frank’s short stories have been published in Bending Genres, X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Maudlin House, Rejection Letters and elsewhere. He was runner-up in The Forge Literary Flash Fiction competition. He has been nominated for Best Small Fictions.