At seven in the morning,
I'm still sleepy.
A faceless one
shoves a wad of leaflets
into my hands,
tells me to distribute.
So I am out in the streets
with these worthless handbills.
Sounds easy
but what is it about
brief, harmless advertising tracts
that brings out the fear in people?
The businessman in his grey suit,
presses his brief-case
hard against his chest
as if I'm trying to disembowel him
with paper.
The young woman, I'm sure,
would rather lift her gray skirt
down a back alley
and let beasts make love to her
than take one.
Okay so it's a shady deal,
it's a load of crap,
it's the ultimate lie,
but we all have to make a living, don't we.
Ten solid hours of this
and no one takes a one.
At five, I go back to my apartment,
sit in my chair in total darkness,
hand these missives to myself.
See, that's how simple it is
to take one.
Think about death in a loud place,
one of those parties
where Pearl Jam's playing
and everyone's talking
over everyone else,
piling voices on top of
each other like a
college prank from the fifties,
and glasses clink,
and drunks flop around
like fish in tanks,
and there's people dancing badly
and others forgetting jokes
and it's all loud and frenetic
and gleefully self-serving
and shamelessly cannibalistic
and then imagine death as it all stopping,
as the parents coming home
or the phone call saying
someone crashed their
Pontiac on the way to the shindig
or the hostess has a headache
and she wants to go to bed
and everyone has to leave
and then remember
that none of these things
can stop the momentum
once it gets going,
the enjoyment rattling on
like a tanker down a hill
trampling the forces
that try to cut it cold,
because too much of a good thing
is a good thing
and good things perpetuate like stars
but it does end eventually,
in the morning,
landscape trashed,
light tart and unsavory,
bodies lying around
like sick confetti,
only that's not death either
but the evidence
of what it would be
if you really could get into
life that way
and you were around after
it was all done
to notice the difference.
When not writing poetry, John Grey earns a buck or two as a financial analyst.
Comments (closed)
desirae
2008-05-10 19:04:44
i read party favor and it got my attention. im going to give itr a try for prose and poetry interpretation class. if there are more poems like this one please send them to me. id be more than delighted to receive them!!