A 21st CENTURY SABBATH

I was tired of the T.V.,
and playing Street Fighter
and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles

I'd been listening to Elliott Smith
and his poetic melodies
inspired my grizzled psyches
and I wanted to write a poem

Outside I lit a cigarette
in the cool and the full moon-light
where the nameless trees
always dance with the breeze

I hot-boxed the cigarette
and thought of downtown below
where even the bars
were closed for Sunday,
as God had instructed
just after he'd created the trilobites,
the stalactites, the neanderthals,
the dinosaurs, the doves,
and the lobsters I love
but can't afford

So instead of going out for absinthes,
I went inside
and ate my nightly bread
generally doused in olive-oil,
followed by 3 fish-oil pills
and various vitamins, minerals
pain-killers and sedatives:
a chemical feast

Then,
having already perused the digital New York Times
and written my pen-pals across the world,
I laid down on my zebra bean-bag
and put on CNN
to hear about Iran's new drone bombers,
and the terrorist plot to build
a free cultural center in Manhattan