Help

a word shoved into a garbage can
you know? beneath Swedish meatballs and empty Pepsis
help is a man beneath the sun-colored walls of some coffee shop
carrying cardboard shame and coughing toxicity
help is
 
a flaccid man in Bermuda shorts
murmuring sudden defeat, you know the type
waddling down a street with divorce papers, smile an upside-down parabola
you’ve only explored five hundred options
but help is a triviality. you know
 
every problem has its own solution
so help yourself
brush away words stalking like crazed Lifetime psychos
delinquent, overdue, risk, management,
they’re just little crumbs
 
nothing that can’t be swept away
and waterboarded in Merlot
doused with a few episodes of Curb Your Enthusiasm
for comparison. after all Larry David got a fatwa from the ayatollah right?
and if they rise to the surface----visualize positivity


a week out
a month
a year into the expanse of time
just never ask for help
call it assistance, don’t call it help
it’s feedback.
 
yes, you’re sinking into negativity, you’ve bounced too many times
liver rotting like Rasputin, eyes rife with rings
get feedback, evaluate the options
eat more TV dinners, don't eat onions, visualize, self-actualize, cut streaming services while
 
asking for encouragement, support, assistance
after all you’ve sunk a little lower
the numbers like icebergs, your sheets stale, space rife with dust
but it’s just support, fine it’s assistance
but it’s not help

Yash Seyedbagheri is a graduate of Colorado State University’s MFA program in fiction. His work has been published in The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts, Write City Magazine, and Ariel Chart, among others.