The BlackBerry Man

He’s bound to a device for a well-rounded life,

a lone star with an ink stained soul; a face of a mannequin

lost in a starless tarry sky with no one to call except

his broker, monitoring a roller-coaster of mazuma

mounting or descending in a swill of pork bellies,

soybeans and silver.

Controlled and controlling, a symbolic logician tactician,

a one-man Prussian army issuing orders to himself.

He sleeps precisely eight hours, records what he ate

and will eat, ordering scheduled movements of colicky bowels.

On Sunday he checks off programs, scheduling

encounters with paid partners who don’t mind his reading the funnies

spread out beneath them, the only aphrodisiac that works for him.

Wedding plans are on his agenda, right behind

vacations to the Taj Mahal and the Great Wall of China,

taking picture after picture to remember he was there.

He wears a mask of sanity; a living dead man with no idea,

except in the solitude of night when the rain beats down on his

gunmetal grey house, wind blowing and gutters overflowing,

in an incubus induced tachycardia.

His body vibrates in fright shriveling his genitals,

not knowing he is still unborn.

Wild-eyed and flummoxed, his ears won’t stop buzzing

as he wonders what he could be missing.