He practices techniques to ignore, explain, reconcile his daily affronts, fact that whole life is founded atop the graves, upon the backs of others, he was baptized in sweat and blood squeezed from countless invisible turnips, a rainbow of tones, oceans away. Likes to call it affirmations, being grateful, employing positive thinking…

tank on low
the bird pauses, gorges itself
to get back aloft

Jerome Berglund

The doctor prescribes a stimulant. His patient rampages. A sedative is then tried. The sufferer falls asleep at his wheel, causes a thirty car pileup. Injured casualties become addicted to obligatory pain meditations, when scripts expire switch to available street equivalents, take up lives of vice, careers in crime to treat the agonizing pains and debilitating withdrawal symptoms resulting from attempts to curb their intake, wean themselves clear. Their pill pushers, sanctioned and unofficial, compare notes at different lodges among orgiastic bacchanals, waited on hand and foot by trafficked courtesans, many of whom they recognize as past or present patients and consumers. They exploit their acquaintance, take advantage of positions to chisel them a bit more; knowledge of desperate neediness provides a phenomenal means of haggling rates down until they become quite competitive.

cannibals
cook month’s worth, seal in tupperwares
family-style meal prep

Jerome Berglund