Nothing's sadder than listening
to other people party,
toying with the abacus of ideology
while twenty-year old prodigals
get half-bipolar on the blow--exotic dope:
qualuudes, ayahuasca, cool stuff
they briefcased in from cities
richer than thou,
more-well-adjusted than thou.
As they learned money management
I played the lottery--
roasted marshmallows on coat hangers
over candles on the roof,
slid home on the frozen tears of dirty old lunatics
patrolling in Town Cars for love
and watched the earth turn on its side to sleep with me,
absorbed by elementary questions
we are asked to answer with assumptions:
What is a point? What is a line?
What do you miss when you have everything and no desire?
Shackles soon appeared
laws would focused
fine print enlarged.
I took chess too seriously.
I learned what’s in the biggest books of all.
Some birds never learn to fly and still survive.
XIII.
How terrified they were when the elevator doors reopened before Egmont’s Somalian wife, tied up in white lace and sent to announce that men with the initials J.H. would be taken that night in honor of James Hickok.
“Wild Bill!” Frank concluded. “Whose face appeared on only one known gold dollar coin in U.S. history. Didn’t Dad tell you? It’s the gold dollar that belonged to Egmont. The gold dollar stolen from Dad’s office. Joe, don’t you see? Joe, you look drugged!”
XIV.
Joe Hardy shook his head to dust the fleas of sleep and fear and beauty from his face, then made his way around the cataract falling from a chasm in the ceiling through a chasm in the floor. He found his brother kneeling by an overturned hat that had sprayed its hold of caramels, butterscotch, licorice, and mints across the room. “Whoever put these candies here must have switched them with the lobster tails and kidnapped Dad,” Frank postulated.
toying with the abacus of ideology
