you have to say something

Obligation is a big headed guy who is red in the face, hairless, bad skinned,
fat armed, necked and shouldered, sitting in a deli, always leaning forward, looking over your head.

Nothing fun will make him happy like TV or an unexpected conversation about existence.

He'll eat a turkey sandwich from a bodega or takeout from a Thai restaurant,

but you have to attack him early in the morning with a heavy duty fishing net and a rusty metal bar.

He'll come back to the same street corner every week day and he'll only speak Russian and wear silver rings and chew on a toothpick; so forget about reasoning with him.

When you think about it existentially, as if the physical world weren't shaped the way it is, as if highways didn't mean so much to us, he's really a cobra.

He's your cobra, and you are the cobra because you own it. You are an obligatory cobra who made a comparison early in life. Eventually the perfidious comparison tapered into a cobra tail. It's always dragging on the floor near you. You are operating an erect cobra head, and life's soundtrack is a dance beat with sharp high-hatting.

You see a feeble cobra tail escape around corners and into sewer drains. You are scared when you're high. How long could your body possibly be. There is no possible control and you feel dirty from its dragging.

You are antsy to be bitten. You need to be bitten because you are something you can't tell you are without experiencing a riveting attack.

You go to the pet store with a friend and ask if you could have a snake, preferably a cobra, bite you.

They say, 'yes. come to the back.'

'Fuck. O.K. It's happening.'

'Here. Here's a cobra. We don't even keep him caged. Just lean you forearm near his little bed there.'

'Fuck. O.K. It's happening. You did this to yourself.'