I’m not interested in how
you’ve learned to endow
pockets of webblifrabe
with auto-chiffliswabe
and made the director go “wow”
so that now
you’ve earned enough
thimbles of bottom-fluff
to eat the best beef stroganoff
in downtown Saratov
and to jet off
with a pack of well-thimbled fellows
to the sandy meadows
and quaint back-street ghettos
of Mauritania
to sample the local mania
for the sweetest weed
you’ve ever freed
your mind with, ignoring
the way that, from morning
till moonlit evening
the market square’s heaving
with black slaves,
before sitting around in caves
with a man who never shaves
addling your brainwaves
as your best mate rants and raves
against how the white man behaves,
I’m not interested in all
those books that line your hall
which so enthral
your desire to bluster and bawl
as they install
ideology in your small
soul, as they caterwaul
in isms and ations
and mental masturbations
that you mistake for facts.
I’m not interested in the acts
you put on, in the mask
you wear as you bask
in the flatulent air
of society’s glare.
I possess not one sliver
of interest in how clever
or good you believe yourself
to be, or in your wealth
or importance or power.
As we melt into the hour
when dark-suited, sour
demons up in the tower
come to devour
the once-blooming flower
of humanity,
drop this inanity!
This vanity,
this insanity!
Show me who you are,
show me every scar,
every bruise,
your emotional stews,
the times you couldn’t choose
and were forced to lose.
Show me how you groan
and rage and thrash and moan
when you’re cut to the bone
and find yourself alone
in a forest of faces of stone.
Show me how you regroup as
the stormtroopers
of the human psyche tear
your life, your mind, your bare
soul to thin air,
show me what’s there,
what scraps you have left
when your sense of the world is cleft
and you’re bereft
of what makes you thrive.
Don’t give me jive,
show me why you strive
to survive,
what makes your passions dive
into overdrive.
Show me why you’re alive.
