Information Society

Fear. Numbers. Money—-
All bottom line criteria detailing this century
resulting from ignorance & an enlightenment
which occasionally strives not to hurt.

Here, looking hard is a travelogue taken from a’67 Buick running on three flats:
Bumpety-bump, rabbit-hearted alignment wearing out shocks, getting impounded
just around the bend, that knowledge, building Character, Will,
if they’re not demolished in the process.

Things aren’t always like that. They break off, blow away whole or
are put up on blocks at a welfare hotel—–
The food ceiling hung so rats can’t get at it, seven people in
the john painting cockroaches to match decor.
This is called resourcefulness, making the best of…

Just so, the battered street kid tattoos his tracks,
an illustrative Chagall dreaming of heat instead of how Dad drunk the rent
or how such powerlessness needed an outlet in the form of broken-jawed Ma.

Why be bitter? Better not to dwell on deeds receding gums
or fillings lost to sores & the symbiosis which evolved, squatter’s rights,
with the benevolence of Dementia.
Instead, a lottery, last dollar down, the dimes spent on supplements,
tuna, canned corn, whatever vitamins might be eked from the bank, the returns
returns for merciful luck, the thread of love bet
when there’s nothing else but information:
fear, numbers, money, to describe this eked-out existence.