You put my pet turtle in the washing machine

because he needed a bath. I think, no,

I know, snakeskin; leathery, real snakeskin

is what separates you from me.

The bank foreclosed the laundromat last week,

and everyone bent over backwards

getting one last wash in, like they’ll never be able to clean

their favorite pair of socks again. Of course,

the news is talking politics and you, more than me

want to take scissors to the TV wires and I ask you,

how does the president slice his oranges? Either way,

it is all wrong, I know, and everything to do

with pineapples, because we eat them without our tongues,

so they don’t burn, of course.

Without amino acids we are both lake water,

the kind that’s squirming with bugs

and did you hear, by chance,

that  the black plague is in style?

So I say,

let’s dress up, rent a tux or something

and I’ll start planning funerals

not for ourselves, but for pre-pollution,

And the people who took those last breaths

of free, unfiltered air.