Are we waiting for an apparatus of wonder
To operate with relentless irritation?
Bingo balls sizzle with the sound of
Fortune for the unfortunate.
In Life a User’s Manual, as the world turns,
The one who waits to be burned by
An impoverished palette.
Do you remember which floor we are on?
How fast should we talk to our neighbors?
Fast enough for the words to disintegrate into thin air
While we’re unaware the climate has changed.
Where were you, my discontent friend,
When he needed you the most?

There is an ominous melting of matters to the puddle of eternity.
Milton is fearful enough to make contact again.
To see the precious water to drip, drop, splash on this hot plate
Is to witness desperately unfulfilled experience.
Immaculate timing: 5, 9, 6 ... 4, 7, 7, 9,
The bad moon rises. It’s a “hot night,” she says.

Finally it’s she who gets her special treatment
By red, yellow, green, and blue
Under the aluminum foil’s moonlight,
Reflective night.
Maybe the bingo moon gives
Life and Death.

Desperate like prisoners of war.
Addicted under nurse Ratched’s order.
Orpheus has his underground heaven.
It synchronizes the colors
Red, yellow, green, and blue.

“I 20, 070, and 31. Or B3, I 29.”
Recursive rounds of meditative perversion for
Some who heard: “I 18 … I 25,
And then B 1, B 9, and 38.”

The creeky sound rises in temperature.
Bull’s nostril, gripping hands are ready to combat.
High noon with Gary Cooper.
Hot, deflated ego!

Go back to sleep, 074!
Did I see the red crescent moon?
Red, yellow, green. No blue?
Two black heads of hair, one blond—
Who saw the crescent moon on the floor
While waiting indifferently for the light
To blink again on my favorite textured yellow?
The walls filled with Baci wrappings.
Proctor Silex is waiting desperately for your arrival.
Dinner is never ready.

Phong Bui