Blend feces and tobacco; you’ll smell those
nights on the subway when everything goes
a little more slowly between each stop.
I have to go on, it’s the programming,
or the program in me.  A single drop
of sweat spreads out in a steel sheen.  The sting
of metal shavings finds my fingernails
clutched at bars perched ludicrously high.
Don’t ask, because no one ever knows why.
My brain has gone dormant; my feelings fail
each test in the magazines.  I can’t hear
the human through the announcements.  They must
work, like all officials, at not being clear.
Like me, who needs sleep, but not to be just.