These men, these
shadows, are like sheep
insofar as lambs are liars
and thieves, relish spreading
slanders through the flock
betraying one another
until the last, in the chute
tupping and butting right up
to the rending, much
like that, these wethers
these ampersands, these
charging rams, these men.
Tag: humanity
Man, O Man
A robot wears a t-shirt:
[ I put the “man” in manufacturing ]
the living, teaming wreckage
of a homeless shanty—the keepers, undulating
like a carpet of snakes in the background
self-driven automobiles racing
above all, on the overpass, our roof
throats low the ambient hum of
the existers lullaby
the tool-master’s dilemma is
a careless construct between
what were thought to be bookends
birth before, and death after
—as a cotton seed sprouts, unconvincingly
on the surface of a rolling doughnut
—as a cotton seed sprouts, unconvincingly
on the surface of the moooon
-:-
(with nods to the venerable Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five)
Folly
the folly of humanity
can be summed up
in about a dozen words
but we’d probably come to blows
trying to agree which ones
people who say it’s
all just fucked—they’re not
wrong exactly, there’s an angle
that sheds a good light on
just about anything
it shouldn’t cost
so much, what we seem to
forfeit, to be able to laugh
it up (in the face of mortality)
and still honor the sanctity
of so many beating hearts
but it does, and we’re
already below the grade in unpaid
bills, afraid for what we have to lose
bad wiring in our calculations
crossed purposes in the DNA
of everything that was born
to believe its own eyes
try to say, ‘it’s love, just love’
over the thriving chorus of
‘yeah, buts,’—you can feel it
but you can’t even hear
yourself think it
and you find yourself saying
yeah, but yourself
Slurry
hypnotic slurry of brilliance and
stupidity, compassion and acute heartlessness
and endless demagoguery
these ancient cave paintings
these wartime leaflets
these political campaigns
this social network
this us, this me
