the ink is ready in my head
black and thick and foul
ready to bite into cheap cotton paper
ready to make a racket at three in the morning
like hail hitting a tin roof

i have the cadence
the rough edges
the heavy sigh of a man who knows
the rent is late
the world is hollow
and the coffee is cold

i have the habit mapped out
by researchers down at ohio state
tracking every drag on a spreadsheet
holding a little red wand
a vuse alto pod clicking into place
burning a mystery labeled fruit one
praying to god it isnt mango
because mango is a crime against nature
just hoping for an honest synthetic berry
engineered in a sterile laboratory
to save a man from his own lungs

i have almost everything required
to be an insufferable brooding artist
starving in an attic
except the machine

the machine isnt resting on velvet in an antique mall
it sits in some sprawling amazon warehouse
a red royal 79120q classic manual typewriter
just waiting in a cardboard box
listed at two hundred sixty-nine dollars
and ninety-nine cents

taunting me with free two-day shipping
ready to drop an analog rebellion right at my door
forty-eight hours of transit to become authentic
had i actually been able to pay
my prime membership this month

so here i sit
at a kitchen table
puffing on regulated ambiguous vapor
too broke to buy the poverty
too cash-poor to purchase the suffering

the hipsters on the internet
call it curation
i call it a hostage situation

i want the jam of two keys colliding in mid-air
i want the greasy thumbs
i want the bell to ding
to tell me i survived another line

instead i have a glowing glass screen
silent as a grave
waiting for me to scrape together
the price of admission
to my own damn identity