It Used To Be Fun

A man walks lazily about in purgatory.
He wears pajamas and a gold watch, no shoes. His
fingernails have grown into delightful little wands.

Purgatory is a theater
with a swimming pool in the center.

Paper all over the floor, an audience
murmuring
in unseen halls.

Plenty of seats.
Plenty of old friends.

Only
by the end,
everybody’s crying, the man too.

He buttons up his baggy blue trousers.
He puts his obsolete
genitals
back in the pocket.
He takes off his wristwatch because he is too ashamed to wear it anymore.
He wants to lose consciousness.

He steps into the pool
fighting with this.

But that’s not the way out.