Employee Appreciation
Day:
Once a year we gather here,
librarians,
come to be appreciated
by
the dead I guess
and
a dean descended from higher learning
to
serve his servants bloody beef and cupcakes
in
the church adjoining this,
your
junk food-covered grave.
One
block away
we've
walked from work
to
hear our entertainment: On bass,
washed-up
hippies playing pan pipe
versions
of age-old diva Escapades
take
you on a journey through the fall days of a critical world.
Now
goth kids stand mistaken
by
your grandfather’s grave
licking
their razorblade scars,
invoking
anarchist mantras,
half-expecting
some chance wedding
of
werewolf and tarantula.
O
can’t you hear it, mustache man?
Is
that your spirit in the manhole steam?
Have
you heard how slot machines
can
cut your debts in half?
The
army will take you back now. If nothing else,
the
journals fill with sanguine tales—
babies
born inside out, the man who grew a second tongue.
Sorry,
still no cure for congestion of the brain
but
pills and things you tried:
Start
saying weird shit to people.
Point
to the cherubims and say
“Dude, check out those nude little dudes,”
and
watch how professional eyes
grow
wide as freaked apes, saying
You’ve got the wrong place,
go out on Lexington, go join
the crack addicts;
they dance like flamingoes
all day at the market.
It’s
tempting, but hey,
we
all need a paycheck,
so
I stick til the end,
the
last one still expecting more
than
a case of e. coli and a belly of
confections.
Even
my eyelash parasites flee
cuz
the charm of guessing con men
from
the destitute has gotten to be old,
and
I never read my tickets when I play for lottery gold.
Tell
me if nervous laughter is drifting over El Dorado
now.
You
correct the ghosts.
I’ll
conform.
