With the muscle memory of an elderly man recalling his childhood class locker combinations, there is a familiar feel to this aging moment. That which is typically hidden is occasionally revealed, yet facts be damned! The reserved seats were bought on consignment and the crowds were in a pleasant mood, game for anything to follow. Twenty years of performance script, rendering verse and coming forth only when our water-logged starship has reached the designated coordinates around the space heater in the sky. Navigation has confirmed, a cheap dime-store calendar provided a second opinion. Trust but verify. We have arrived at the fourth Thursday in November. Hopefully, you caught the name of the orderly who assisted our escape from the self-help retreat, and if so, send him a thank you note because this is The Chronicles of a Lost Southerner.
The pimp game is easier these days as Caesars has been playing with house money. Every ballet box dictator turning up the flames, gotta collect on their piece of the insurance claim. The policy is written in paranoia ink and funded by loose cowboy finances. Them there vain and vile pumping unleaded cash into the pit that smells worse than July white trash, while the neon cathedrals mine for the fool’s gold fever. Just enough human to keep the animal side from being marked as fair game. Boy, your credit ain’t no good round these parts, better retreat with haste, good fortune is no longer mandatory.
The cell’s walls are coated in misty tide foam padding, put in place to protect brains voided out by endless amounts of liquid luck and ambient crazy. The new conformity is anti-conformity. Strolling paths littered with sticks and stones that break bones, more concerned are thee that a person might step on words that hurt. Statues removed. How will they ever find hate without landmarks? Yesteryear victors long laid to rest, peacefully and praised, become the ghosts wrestled by change artists, whose restoration brushes touched up the past to meet the present’s excellence. Those who avoid history are the ones sitting in the living room asking the pets and plants why there are so many reruns on repeat.
Prosperados
evangelize the grifter’s creed in cold calculation. Dead air in their voices.
The sort of conman who would rent out their mother’s soul for better margins. Reminding
all that it’s a pleasure doing business with us and not forgetting our parting gift;
a commemorative flashlight to search for our self-worth in the echo’s reflection.
All the while war saints high on their lies stand strong and confident, assuring the masses that we’ll be safe if the superhero is untethered to do what is right. Flags
and suspicion. If they die young the devil never has a chance to get ’em. So,
get yours while the getting is generous. And in the end, when your stone is
thrown into eternity’s pond, may the ripples dance on and on and on, long after
you’re gone.
Jarvis
