Pinpricks

the pinpricks fall from the gray sky

adhering to the car’s windows like flypaper

landing on the grounded like buttered toast

 

the other cars are ready to be the

Predators and the Wild fighting for

the Central Division title

 

and the pinpricks in his fingertips

are like, are you to not feel the cold

as the nerve death takes over?

 

you’re the size of a planetary moon.

the universe says loudly, and your

body is now paying the price for it

 

you might as well say good night,

and good luck on getting reattached,

you dumb sonofabitch

 

and you wonder why he only sees

Krampus as the true superhero

of the holiday season

 

each day of the year fells like

an infested, pus-filled boil wrapped

under a blanket of frozen snot

 

a billion tiny pinpricks on the nerve endings,

the logarithmic time scale moving still,

the gray sky or the sun singing low, low, low

 

and the child whines to mother,

so many kids are absent and

we’re just doing pointless work

 

so he’s called in to be a Jet,

a Predator, a Star, a Blackhawk

as Chelsea Dagger screams do-do-do

 

but climbing the hill up 22nd street

is just a simple exercise in physics,

because nature stopped the pinpricks

 

yet the nerve damage remains and

winter still s***s whiteness everywhere,

so what else is all that new?

 

time to plaster on a give-a-s**t attitude

and try to get through this unhinged

orgy of madness called today

 

pinpricks and all that jazz,

absurdist tularemia abounds

and life is just warped theater