Sloth covers me, it is me.
I am made of layers of sloth
which cover my body
like an obscene chicken suit.
I am covered with sweat,
tangled mane stuck to the body,
pulling crumbs from the hairs
in this couch that ensnares.
There is a mess,
a complete mess,
a disastrous mess,
a mess worthy of scorn.
Plastic bags flung wide
in this voluminous room,
papers half crumpled
on the carpet on the floor.
There are electronic devices,
phones, batteries, thumb-drives,
old video game cartridges,
and boxes full of games.
I do not play them,
I sell them to support
my most slothful habits
which stay with me
even as I work into the night.
If there were demons,
they would be languishing in this mess,
making obscene gestures
and cackling into
the centipede-crawled walls.
There are pill bottles
(a complete mess),
furniture askew,
and a red glow emanating
from a haphazardly placed
Raspberry Pi.
Papers are piled on papers,
junk mail upon junk mail.
There are zines, catalogs,
letters, a complete disaster.
I know there are crumbs,
I know there are insects.
At least cockroaches have not come
to make their home in this abode
(to the best of my knowledge).
I am stricken with a malaise
that keeps me on this couch,
keeps me immobile,
keeps me making excuses.
Aluminum cans stand tall on tables,
there's a bottle of isopropanol as well.
Q-Tips are flung here and there,
there's fuzzy messes everywhere.
Wires are present,
so many wires:
USB cords, whether C, micro, mini.
There are A/C adaptors,
business cards advertising my poetry,
boxes full and empty,
and boxes half-full as well.
I cannot remove
my rear end from this sofa.
The effort of trivial tasks
seems daunting and difficult to deal with.
There is a Bluetooth speaker
that has a dead battery.
It needs one of the USB-C cables
strewn about the room.
There are three lamps,
one ceramic and usual
for a living room such as this.
There is a bright light as well,
one of a fairly old make,
and a boxy Japanese-style lamp
with a thin cloth shade.
There is a chair,
a recliner chair,
but even reclining
doesn't seem lazy enough.
I need this couch,
need to be deadened by this couch,
my spit dribbling onto its cushions,
my tears dripping onto its surface.
There are new blinds in this room
which keep the neighbors from seeing
this terrible mess I live in,
this terrible mess I drown in.
A clock silently advances
through all of the deadened days.
It's positioned above a light-switch
that needs to be cleaned.
There is an amish rocking chair
that is a little broken,
a portion of it broke
decades ago.
It holds plastic bags
that need to be somewhere else,
but finding a place for them
seems like an impossible task.
Do I suffer from depression?
This idiotic sloth
makes me feel like dross
that covers the sofa.
There is an old cordless phone,
next to a large, disused television
and behind it is a mess of wires
HDMI, Cat-5e,
and various flavors of plugs.
On the table is a multimeter
used to test batteries
that find their way to the garbage
from old video games.
There is a tap light,
glasses and headphones,
brass wool and a screwdriver,
some coasters and other trinkets.
The pattern on the carpet
is actually quite symmetrical
unlike everything in this room
that screams out
to be put into order.
So do I suffer from sloth?
Is it a character flaw I own?
Surely I cannot blame anyone
other than myself
for this most hideous, inglorious mess.
So, yes, I am a sloth,
laying on this couch
that is feeding me thoughts
about how I shouldn't move.
The incandescent light shines dim,
the shadows are dreary and gray,
on this ample belly
that juts up from my torso.