Experiment

My roommate was made up of bones in a bag

from the sperm of some random dude

who pieced him together with all that he had

before he split with a fragment of skin

and some fine young girl’s hair.

And for many a week he was wrapped up in rags

left sagging still knotted and tied

like a ball of lint—but that fit boy went bad,

and was groomed up to drink

before he gloomed about shadows

made by his maker more aware.

So what was distracted by that glory

of transience—by life in the frat,

grew to fly toward death and sire not a breath

to come knocking in the night

and annoy his roommate still.

Now this boy leaps down the hall and lavatory

and unravels before the lightning

in his body kills or burdens him like crystal meth

to keep him sluglike on the floor

before my dorm room door when left

alone again with a child’s will.

Good luck to you late-night knocker!

You who crawled down the drain

of the insane and came out crying in its fangs!

For you have seen this man inside

and were witness to him naked!

Ha! Just know my old roommate was found

down in the campus pond

and lays decomposing with the insect gangs!

And those same bones and sand

also kept that drunk alive and bent

when nothing to him was sacred!

(another failed experiment!)

NEXT

--Porter Daryl's Poems