We never asked for the multiple overtures from the Bahman bums
who took none of his creeds to their grasping chest cavities,
but there we were,
spreading out the adverts masking as letters,
all claiming to know exactly
the bind we were in and what they would do – for
a nominal fee – to get us out of a debt
our understanding informed us
didn’t exist.

All through the next week,
we debated, this lawyer or that,
and what approach and how would we pay, and why should we pay,
when this debt was a matter
that didn’t exist?

All through the week, too, invariably,
our attention turned to the nature of debt and who was shaken
and who did the shaking.
Our better avatars never used the
words “shyster” or “scumbag,”
but we are seldom at our best
when our enforced seclusion
is shattered by forces
that proclaim they can rip our paper worlds
and be perfectly justified in so doing
and make it appear that
at no time
did we ever exist.

The other morning, both of us at computer screens,
madly searching avenues for pro bono representation –
true Bahmans –
when you emit a joyful whoop.
Before I can ask, you hold up your hand,
reading the response from
the entity to take us at our paper words and make the bums
retreat into the shadows like a recoiled snake.
Who knew such a deus ex machina moment could
happen, all while the world had supposedly shut down, and with it
the summons no one skimming the public teat
has to prove the right to exist?