17 years on the job By John Grochalski

rivers of shit

flooding the kitchen

 

rivers of dirty water to drink

 

madmen

screaming in the bathroom

 

rivers of madmen

jerking off

to school-aged girls

 

the same faces

day in and day out

 

like reoccurring character

in the bad sitcom of my life

 

the rivers of alcohol

that i have consumed

to help me cope

 

others have worse hells

but this is mine

 

so fuck off

 

and if this place doesn’t kill me

 

and if i don’t go mad

or kill someone myself

 

i still have thirteen years of this left

 

before the great

meat grinder of capitalism

casts me off

 

like fatty gristle

on an overcooked steak

 

condescends

to finally throw me away.

John Grochalski is the author of the poetry collections, The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and The Philosopher’s Ship (Alien Buddha Press, 2018). He is also the author of the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016).  Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.