This is the way the world is:
Drunk, strung out on the euphoric smack
Of its own illusions of history
Sucking down the bitter pills
Like tapioca pearls stuck in the bottom of bubble tea
Strained through flavored watered-down sugar
Dressed in an exquisite facade
Crumbling at the edges like an old whore at the Parthenon
Waiting for another savior to crucify
Fighting the signs of age
Its revolutions caked like rejuvenating facial cream
Or dried semen on a dried and cracking diaphragm
Pierced and tattooed with disappearing ink
The sickly sour smell of henna hanging like a green cloud
From its clogged and distended pores
Drinking from a specimen cup its nasty medicine
While saying it loves the taste, but wishing it were less filling
Relishing the savor of bile and old phlegm
Dead and gone to seed to fuel a new regime
Of diet fads and infomercials promising improved performance
Its kindling clear-cut and fed to friendly fires
Thinking it is not in free fall
Just because the cliff from which it jumped is so high
The bottom is not yet in sight
Raw and bruised, its shoulders red and swollen to the touch
From refusing to share the authority of being
Among its myriad of creations
This is the way the world is:
Mouse and trap entwined as one mass of writhing matter
Lost because it thinks it drew the map.
21 AUG 2003
