My mound returns the venom - with interest    The lips

Are not exactly pursed    The eyes askance speak

Of modes of indirection as if they represent

Some kind of hone    Ergo one wanders away into the night

Dropping apart slice by slice    Meets gruesome death

With a grin that is not so readily ascribable    How did it happen

The citizenry want to know    We were content with glances

Loaded with suspicion & disapproval    Mothers entreating

Their children to come way    Quickly darling    Now we are as if

Trapped outside with each other    Some handle or other

                                                  once so sophisticated

Having broken off in our frantic mitts    Tones seem far off

& not at all descriptive    People call to each other in the streets

In garbled incomprehensible phrases    I mean

“Birdshitcoloredmotherfucker” could mean anything    Then an

Old acquaintance dawdles past a couple of times    Guessing at last

That he is simply too slow to recognize    It is the same story

All over    They say our horizons are reduced    There is room enough only

For a coin operated machine    Which is forever in the process of being

Vandalized    Now it turns out to have been awful of us to want so much

To be coddled    Why it has become for us in these times the zenith

Of all opprobria    Others say nadir    Whatever    On & on

As if nothing else matters    Keep putting up todays posters

Over yesterdays posters    Soon the credits will roll    The lights go up

& a gaunt youth sidle out of nowhere feigning to deal with

The detritus left in our wake    One look at his face tells us

He is paid to show    Not to give a shit    For at his age

He knows the score    One of the buddies always dies in the end    Leaving

The other holding a bucket full of glue    There is even a song about it    This

Chary everything    Hanging over our heads like a universal pall

Posted on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at 9:42 pm
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