555 Any St.
Any City, Any State, USA.
this is my story,
reporting from Suburban America
with our solar sidewalk lamps,
overpriced gas grills,
square manicured plots of land
hiding our oversized rage.
or is it
MY
oversized rage?
back among these walls,
their mechanical crush
squeezing out more questions than answers.
I have leftovers in the fridge
that I will nuke
in my suburban microwave
(please note:
“nuke”
is now an acceptable term
for heating food,
rather than
annihilating
a population),
and eat on a plate
with a fork
because I am one who owns plates and forks,
a cheese grater
and seven spatulas.
but these things I call
mine
are merely
objects of possession,
signs of accumulation,
dare I say
wealth.
that's what they tell me I should be striving for.
so someone please
PLEASE
explain this pursuit to me,
explain ANY pursuit to me.
why happiness?
why betterment?
why knowledge?
I ate my leftovers with two pieces of white bread.
a symbol of this country
indeed,
bleached wheat flour
make it whiter
get the brown out.
and here I go preachin' again,
steppin' on a soapbox among giants.
whispering and cowering
in self-deprecation.
I want freedom,
but I don't know why.
the pursuit of happiness,
reach for your dreams,
strive for excellence,
knowledge is power,
the truth
shall
set
you
free.
bend over
insert cliché.
I don’t have any dreams.
I am an inventor of career goals and life plans.
come talk to me
I’ll set you up with a dream you can’t reach.
oh, but you’ll have some bills,
some credit card debt,
student loans for an education you never wanted in the first place,
a white picket fence
that’s only white on the street side,
and a dog that barks at your neighbors.
you want a car?
sure.
don’t push me on the hobbies though.
you just can’t afford them,
in time or money.
your life will go as follows:
wake up
drink 1.3 cups of coffee
pack briefcase
drive to work
get white in halogen light
happy hour with colleagues you unconsciously hate
go home
feed dog (apologize to neighbors)
watch Leno or Letterman
(see, you do get choices)
sleep less than the recommended 8 hours.
wash, rinse, repeat.
please sign by the X.
initial here for the uncertainty of religion,
and here to sacrifice your soul for the fast track.
take this form and go stand in that line,
men to the left
women to the right
those with fluid gender please follow me.
we’re looking for the back way out,
in the hollow space between walls,
on our way
underground.
down deep
below the masses
and their regulated
privatized
marked-with-orange-barrels
lines.
this is the hard way,
the crawling-through-shit way,
the low-way,
the pay-the-toll-with-your-soul way.
but to know your soul
you have to know its breaking point,
and be willing to tread that road,
because what you think you know
is only a fraction of what you
can
know.
still want to pursue happiness?
start asking yourself
what, exactly, is
happiness?
happy is such a happy word
such a happy fucking word
with your two p’s
and your y
all happy-like.
happy happy happy
but
a white picket fence is still a fucking fence
September 2005