The speaker wakes up on his birthday with a sore back and an empty apartment. His roommates, Pat and Ron, have already left, and nobody seems to mark the day. So he marks it himself, putting on "birthday pants" and a "birthday shirt," buying a pepsi for breakfast, and taking a pill. The details are small and a little sad, and the flat, run-together lines make the day feel aimless.
He tries to be productive: Greek lessons, a book on Juan Gris, a read through his own poems. But he gloats over one and skips the others, and he ends up saying, "I hate books." The final stretch turns into a chain of "I wonder" lines. He worries about old friends, whether people talk about him, whether he is too old, whether he is fooling himself about pills. Then come the toilet paper and the icebox. The mood is lonely and anxious, but it is also funny, because big fears and trivial chores sit side by side in the same breath.