———

———

We’re Fine, Really

If the stock market were to crash again

I won’t stick around for the Depression to kick me in the head

I’ll be the first malingerer with a broken tooth

packing my Lydia Lunch records in a plastic box

with a camera to watch the weary men with weary, waning skin

whirling around like unfed pigeons in the wind

scrambled about like a bowl of suited dust

ties like a lazy noose cliché   

and when nothing changes, I’ll sigh

then trade up alliteration for apathy

Since I keep all my money in a gutted text

(appropriately in the Revelations of the famished John

who was more hungry than divine

as we all have been at a given time)

I can get liquid quick

take a snort, find a snog

buy some cheap real estate on a burning Greek beachside

to crib a screenplay from a Homeric myth

since people tend to need entertainment

when they can’t feed their kids

and maybe I’ll slip in a short sermon

like a corporate loophole

to pacify the better days that never come
(unless posthumously or in hindsight)

constantly waiting for the joke to become funny

or for the writing to get better

for the surrealism to eat me entirely

for the deification of mad women to become a horseshoe game   

for some beautiful losers to find me in a lonely cavity

my eyes chafed by acrid boredom

and tattoo the words I needed on my chest:

“love exists to make up for an ugly world”

…

But, again – this is just periphrasis for the plenum  

Until we can get Kafka to speak again…

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