I counted many beans: pinto, navy, garbanzo.
I swallowed my purple pill
Followed by my yellow pill

Before leaving the house with my game face.
I gave the finger to a tailgating Cherokee,
And prayed he wasn’t deranged, packing heat.

I gave blood, which they promptly rejected;
It was, they told me, the wrong kind.

I slept with my ex but was somewhere else.
She was somewhere else, too,
In that secret fold each of us fed.

In an elevator, trapped between floors,
I gnawed off my foot. I didn’t even have to.

Wrote a letter full of vitriol,
Another, of rain.

Ate a plum. Then ate another one.
Then I ate a third, in accordance
With the law of diminishing returns.

I sprayed the medflies with malathion
While negotiating with the hijackers.

I knelt before a likeness of Buddha Ratnasambhava
While slowly strangling a paparazzo.

I parlayed a risky venture
Into a virtual windfall,
Then lost the deed to the ranch.

Before going to bed, reflected on
A stray dog I had petted
Who would one day eventually betray me.