This moonless syrup,
this tonic,
this black
cascading fizz.
Like the breadth of the American night
through glass.
Think ‘ebullience’. Think ‘McDonald’s’.
Perhaps you’ve seen our trucks
barrelling
madly all over this land,
careering
mutely between reality and dream,
copyright
red, stark
as a sentence.
O for a draught of vintage! Long cooled in a soda fountain!
(At the risk of making
light of the issue, the obesity epidemic is
expanding.)
Speaking of which:
Santa Claus. Fake news. He was
our invention.
It’s like we were always here, squatting
impishly in memory’s corner.
I believe there’s something tremendous to be said
for billboards, for lurid universals. The
trenches in which we conduct our lives require
these illusions of confluence.
May we be bolder and greener in the new century, try in spite
of, feel in spite of. The world is an unwieldy band.
I don’t suppose
it’ll ever hold a tune.
