Have I lead a Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtle’s life?
     People talk about privilege, but there’s no object
          eerier than this personhood’s yellowy shawl.

Maybe there’s an emptiness that has no literal
     value, it shifts but nothing shudders, exactly
          the life you’ve oft rendered semi-relevant,

succinct, a flooded checkout aisle’s memories
     no longer discards, discounted, a vale of tears
          that has its own grittily attractive pudginess.

When things start cohering together in a life,
     the wren stolid and reflected in a scoreboard,
          jagged mail no longer hefty with meaning,

tropical zones, record bunkers, Ziploc baggies,
     maybe that’s the terrifying fate within things.
          It’s just so smart. I see it fully, bringing back

the high school atmosphere, it inevitably flows
     into perspective, but now, banal, corporatized,
          redone, supernaturally bland with yet activity

in tact, the beige substitutions seem more final.
     Whenever something terrible happens in a life
          the terrible thing’s being smack in the interior.