Becoming Slightly Unhinged In The Bank Waiting For My Priority Number To Come Up During Another Record-Breaking Heat Wave

Mine’s sixty-eight—I’ve been 
“Cooling my heels” over an hour 
And the priority slip I’m now using 
As a bookmark says my waiting 
Time should’ve been around nine 
Minutes; in the meantime, I’ve been 
Making do in the overworked air- 
Conditioned inner sanctum 
Of the nightmare 

Institution which looks after 
My rapidly dwindling bantam 
Nest egg with all the care 
Of a crazed mother hen, 

And reading a slender volume 
Of poems called Sleepwalker’s Songs,
All the while thinking of what I could do 
If my nest egg were fatter, watching 
Customer after customer go up 
To the teller and walk out again 

Onto a dazzling, searing asphalt so hot it could fry 
Enough dinosaur eggs to feed an onslaught 
Of famished, day-dreaming somnambulists 
Armed to the teeth with nothing 
But a slew of cool blank checks— 
I wonder what 69’s thinking of.