I Just Love Formula 409
Copyright 2016 © by Rich Boucher





The more I think about it, the more I live,
the more I live during the night-time, the more I live
knowing only one or two things at the most,
the more I come to love that I love Formula 409.
I don’t know how many other Formulas there are.
I don’t know if there ever was a Formula 408,
or if the future will bring us a Formula 410 one day.

Ever since I was little, ever since the company that makes Formula 409
was little, also, I have loved to say “409”, and you know what?
That company has loved me saying “409”, too.
And I think that’s beautiful; I think it’s a beauty-filled thing,
to do what a company that makes something wants you to do.
More often than not, doing what a company wants you to do
is the only real way to be actualized, to be actually free.

Nothing can compare to the feeling, the undiluted bliss
of having bought something and then doing
whatever the company that made that thing wants you to do.
Compared to that feeling, God is nothing.

What is that company? What is my father?
What is my mother? Was that company that made
Formula 409 also my parents? Were they it?
Were they the company that made both Formula 409 and me?
How long has Formula 409 been in living existence?
I just love Formula 409; I just do.

I think Formula 409 is made by Clorox; I think it’s made by Clorox.
I think it’s made by Clorox, and I think a lot of things are made by Clorox
and I think that when I think about this I, too, become made by Clorox
and I think I’m made, finally, as well, by the ability to love something
that a company makes for me, that a company makes me.
A company makes me, a beautiful, sexy, strong and confident company
that is a nice, clean and classy person from the Clean Heaven.
People talk about corporate this and corporate that, how corporateness is bad,
but those people are just smelly, jealous losers who don’t get as much sex
as the nice companies like Clorox that makes Formula 409 for me.
I’ll bet Clorox gets ALL the action, you know. I’ll bet Clorox does.
Clorox makes so much, they make America wonderful.
And both Clorox and Formula 409 can help me
to make America wonderful.
Wonderful once more. Wonderful again.
Wonderful more once and more again.
See, deep down within me it’s because I love products.
I love to look at products,
and I love that there are products that I can have;
I’m ready to cry if I can’t have a product:
cleansers, Jupiter, I can have cleansers and cleaners
and things and mixtures and brushes and scrubbers,
sponges, rags, mops, brooms, white rooms, rakes, pills,
all of the willing, solutions; I can have all these cleansers,
and they can clean my kitchen counter-tops
and counters and baseboards and personality flaws and weaknesses
and bad people and unclean and unclassy people
that my nice cleansers can wipe off the Earth it’s beautiful
oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh oh
ooooooooooooooooooohhhhhhhh!

Sometimes, I’m homeless.

Sometimes, maybe once a month,
I become disenfranchised and homeless.
And when I am, when I am beautifully homeless
and beautifully without future I find that I’m only alive at night.
And on those alive nights, that’s when I’m walking all by myself
on the shoulder of a grand, lost person, highway, empty,
that’s actually a completely silent country road
(except for the moonlight which has its own sound)
(except for the nighttime birds, and owls, and ravens)
and my only possessions are the clothes that I have on me
(that I’m sure I was wearing at the time I got born)
and a photo of my love, and also my love for Formula 409;
that’s when I realize that it’s up to me
whether or not there is a god.

That’s what it feels like to buy something,
something as beautiful as Formula 409.

I just love Formula 409;
I just do.

I think that was actually my baby formula.
I don’t mean the kind of formula that mimics
the milk of the full, round and human woman breast;
I mean the formula for my design, how I was meant to be.

Let me just say this before I cease to exist:
when I have been lost in the woods of the state forest,
all of my dirty and wild clothes torn apart,
about one mile from where my car overturned off the edge
of that three am country road, I have heard the song of a distant church,
the chanting of the monks singing distantly not far away,
and I have known then, in my essentially feral heart
that I think I am made by the ability to love something
that a company has been nice enough to make me.

A company was nice enough to make something for me.
A company was nice enough to make me,
and I just love Formula 409.