The Ballad of Gracious Living





You’d better get yours: smash
& grab & clutch it to
your chest. Stash
what’s left once you’ve

caught your better
angels & stuffed them
in a bucket. Hump your neighbor’s
lover & then

hump your neighbor, too.
The three
of you are screwed
either

way: henceforth you’ll
be trading hotel
rooms for prison
cells.

It’s petty, too
petty, but in such a short
time it’ll be
a sty in the eye 

of a dog; the difference
between selected 
& collected is the measure 
of your worth:

one's empty & the other
a laughing heap 
of dust motes, no 
two of which are 

alike, either, not
that anyone is paying
any attention.  You 
never had to pay for 

poems, but everything 
else is so dear
you are selling yourself 
to the lowest

bidder & by lowest 
we mean nothing.
Nothing nowhere 
no-one never

nobody are the saints
in this opera; our 
father who art 
obliterated--go now

out the flaming-blade
guarded gate
into the flotsam 
& the jetsam & get 

some so you know that 
there's something anything
to be
had.


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