Live In The Moment
stop glorifying the mundanities of your life
you slave to instant gratification
you notification dope fiend
you influenced follower
you amateur paparazzi
you museless narcissist
you avatar sellout
you aesthete of lackluster
you epiphany of mediocrity
you magnificent superfluity
you do not deserve the people’s attention.
concupiscence strikes the affluent nympholeptics
and the pretty girls savvy at branding themselves
conquer the market with their veblen talents.
White Flighters
…but now they wanna be cool again
so they go back to the city
but the riffraff is still there so they gotta move in slow
one neighborhood at a time the gentlemen return
gentrifying conquistadors
with faux indifference and plaid shrugs
a few at first with authentic crime rate risk
and cheap housing forgotten by the metropolitan purse
till others see it’s not so bad
charming even
and the coffee chains grasp hands
and social mathematics take over
till the area is cliché and everyone tries too hard
and getting dressed takes too long
and parties of people circus about
trying out various personalities
as they mingle conversations in their product placement lives.
Café Couch
I’m sitting on a comfy little sofa in a café
with a fresh cup of coffee and a book of essays
on various interesting artistic subjects I’ve never looked into
what a pleasant summer morning I’m having here in chicago
with my article for the day already done
and free time to read with no deadline helmets on my head
and yet my thoughts are bogged still in the latest climate report
and its damning and pessimistic apocalyptic predictions
with references to the fires in spain and greece and california
and really everywhere this summer
and I find it surreal like time melting desert clocks
how plugged into the doom and gloom I am
and I decide I must stoically rally myself to maybe picking just one
between whether the world is ending or I am having a lovely day.
Familiarity
I can’t believe you didn’t introduce us she says
and I recall I did forget to do that
since she already knows so much about them
from observing in the social book of faces
and we talk about them all the time
but yes I remember now
they have not ever officially publicly met
so the familiarity of course could not be revealed.
Naive Millennial
I stood under the marble doorway
of the art museum’s modern wing
surveying attendees on their experiences of a special exhibit
of discovered underwater artifacts from egypt
and one compliant visitor
a white male sixty-five-plus some college
forty k to fifty k no kids under eighteen currently at home
insisted upon me his theories
that egyptian culture was inspired and constructed by aliens
you could tell he told me passionately
because pyramids were also built way across the ocean in the andes
and alien technology was the only logical explanation
though my survey was more interested
in whether he had been to the museum’s gift shop or the cafe.
back on topic he said he hadn’t been to the latter
but had been to the former and for the succeeding question
he had not made any purchases because he told me
in between requests for me to write his reason down
the gift shop had no alien-related gifts.
I pretended to write it down as he blamed the government
and its deep state conspiracy deniers
for the art museum’s extraterrestrial omissions
and I listened patiently before offering a calm counter-theory
that maybe multiple cultures had constructed large pyramids
not necessarily because of alien deus ex machina but because
pyramids are a rather rudimentary constructional concept
of stacking rocks up as high as you can
that children everywhere enjoy doing on their own
and it’s maybe not therefore surprising over thousands of years
that disparate empires would individually excel
at stacking their piles of rocks splendidly high
and he considered it
thought for a moment
looked me in the eyes
and called me a naive millennial.
The Selfie Room
the selfie room buzzes alive
as the town’s cool kids come in for the happy hour social
bringing their own photographers
but the influencers aren’t doing much drinking
cause you can’t get tipsy or sloppy
when cameras are on and everywhere
and they dip inside a ball pit of simulated nostalgia
and toss rubber ducks in a porcelain tub
and hold pillow cloud puffs in a blue walled hallway
and sit on mushroom pleated ottomans between vinyl palms
and put on masks and crowns in the mardi gras loft
and sit for motorcycle poses with a desert highway road projection
as a tray of complimentary flutes of california brut
for sipping goes around
and I man the bar serving pink nouveau rosé in glass deco goblets
as the gaggle of digital influencers exchange palaver
and trade social handles and follows for turns at blowing kisses
to politely reciprocated shutter clicks
and a girl in a sweater that says ‘champagne please’
turns me down when I offer her some
and another in a mismatch of cougar print and zebra stripes
takes two but they’re not for drinking
and she poses in several contortions pretending to enjoy the bubbly
and then gives them back
she can’t have them in consecutive photo-ops
and it saliently dawns on me
these are not my people. 🥃
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