Yellow, mellow
fluorescents and legal pad lines
divide the road
between now and forever.
Lawyer’s musical pen
scratches the order:
one permanent residence,
one father of happenstance,
one repeating distribution,
of meticulously calculated funds.
How do I love thee?
Let me count my bills and decide.

When consulting suits and
considering missed pursuits
be advised.
Retainers are not
exclusively paired with braces.
Puberty is long gone.
No one, is no longer willing
to keep paying for times
you have yet to suck it up. Buck up!
Be a man, not stuck in a rut.

Listless, you list treacheries,
devise ill-suited revelries.
Let her deduce
that it is sad
seeing you the fool
all laid out and bitter still
an abandoned lot dotted
with tawny dandelions.