HOUSE ARREST

During work hours, I’m the CEO of daydreaming.

I daydream about reading a book.
I daydream about playing a video game.
I daydream about getting hit by a school bus.
I daydream about daydreaming in a hospital bed.

During work hours, I’m proficient at data entry,
coffee-drinking, and resisting the urge
to throw my monitor at the wall
and decapitate myself with the glass.

Somedays, my coworker messages me to vent.
He tells me that he wants to quit —
that he’s thinking of going back to school
or starting a midlife crisis punk band.
He tells me that his workspace feels like a jail cell.
I can relate to this cliché. Most people can.
I guess that’s the point of a cliché.
I guess that’s the point of capitalism.

At lunchtime, I’m the CEO of dinosaur nuggets.
The daydreams are gone like workaholic friends.
My business computer becomes my gaming computer.
Old School RuneScape is the only job I have.
And my fishing level is 99. And my cooking level is 99.
My thieving level is 74, and I have to pickpocket
154,620 more knights to make it to level 99.
With 30-minute lunch breaks,
I might be able to get there if I live to about 99.

After lunch, I’m the CEO of daydreaming.
And my data entry level is 99.
And my coffee-drinking level is 99.
And my clock-gazing level is 99.
And my knocking-over-the-trashcan-
in-a-flash-of-existential-rage level is 99.

Somedays, my coworker messages me a GIF
of the scene in Office Space that begins with
a broken printer sitting on the ground in a field.
And I feel jealous of the printer for not working.
I feel jealous of the printer for being outside.
I feel jealous of the printer because it’s about to be
smashed into 10,000 pieces as 3 guys take turns
kicking it and hitting it with a baseball bat.

---

MY BRAIN IS A MINECRAFT
GRASS BLOCK

Me showing up to a job interview:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me showing up to a funeral:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me cannonballing into my neighbors’ kiddie pool,
prompting 3 terrified children to dive out
into the grass: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me at a silent meditation retreat:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me taking the stage at a city council meeting:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me wandering around the Republican National Convention,
wearing a Bernie Sanders Halloween mask:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me after smashing through a 49th story window
of the Empire State Building with a jetpack:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me during an orgasm:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me tapping on the door of a Wal-Mart bathroom stall:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me cuffing the Wal-Mart intercom mic:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me in the immediate aftermath of wrestling
a Wal-Mart employee to the ground in an attempt
to get a better look at a tattoo of a sea turtle
on his neck: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me wearing a scuba suit, knocking
on the glass from the inside
of an aquarium’s sea-turtle tank:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me riding a stolen ostrich into the police station
across the street from the zoo:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me getting thrown into a holding cell, stumbling over
an unconscious man in a Santa Claus outfit —
a man lying at the feet of a Hulk Hogan lookalike
who has blood dripping from his knuckles:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me waking up disoriented on my couch:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me sprinting on all fours after a group
of blank-faced senior citizens at a nursing home:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me skateboarding into the bank in a black ski mask:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me crashlanding a helicopter in the middle
of a Civil War reenactment battlefield:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me to my girlfriend whenever I forget
our Wi-Fi password: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me at a poetry reading, interrupting from the back
as a woman reads a sonnet about her husband’s
terminal cancer: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me after nailing Jeff Bezos to a cross I superglued
to the front of an Amazon truck, then driving
the truck through the wall of a Catholic church:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me after a self-proclaimed axe murderer from Craigslist
drags me into his basement:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me waking up on an autopsy table, surrounded
by three-headed scalpel-wielding extraterrestrials:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me riding a tricycle through the entrance
of the Playboy Mansion, just before getting tackled
by 15 security guards: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me lying alone in bed, after not speaking at all But
for 4 straight days, to see if I still have a voice:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me joining a Zoom call with my therapist:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me knocking on the interior wall of my dirt-covered coffin:
“Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

Me surfing on a hammerhead shark, riding
a hurricane-induced tidal wave, landing on the balcony
of an ocean-front hotel room occupied
by a solitary man who, in his mustard-stained Ronald Reagan
campaign shirt from 1980, is watching
a televised sporting event and standing By
for the national anthem, as if he’ll get anything out of that,
as if his upstairs neighbor isn’t blasting “The End of
the World” by The Cure on partially blown-out speakers,
as if a wormhole isn’t seconds away from opening
in the sky, sucking him through the ceiling
like a ghost: “Hi. What’s the Wi-Fi password?”

---

Brandon Diehl lives in New Jersey with his cat. His writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Maudlin House, Pool Party, Scaffold, Cottonmouth Journal, Blood+Honey, Horror Sleaze Trash, The Literary Underground, and other places. You can find him at http://www.brandondiehl.net, which he never updates.