Post-Modern Joe

Sit man, sit there in your
patent leather chair-
dark as sun-beat skins
hanging on racks like bone.

Put up your feet.
They traveled bare and tragic
to their ill-bit destinies.
Take your SPF and your ADD,
swallow all your acronyms
with a healthy dose of naivety.

Paper all the walls
with well-deserved amenities.
Watch your 11:00 news
stocked neatly with celebrities.

Drink down your low-fat
double-shot existence
with a buttery, crumbling
order of priority.

Don't bother to forget
tiny hands, tiny stomachs.
Fill you tank, pay your rent,
complain about utilities.

Bow your head in prayer,
wish for health, wish for wealth,
go be saved, you'll be pardoned
all your sins and infidelity.

Vote for your politicians.
Argue your family values.
Slap on that anti-Bush bumpersticker.
Scoff at the "gay disease."
Forget your soldiers die for you.
For get it's all an oil game.
Forget it's no fault but our own.
Forget that we are all the same.

Shed tears at the death
of your dog-a thousand gone,
sacrificed to the goodly doctor.
That child's chance left to one vaccine.

Sit man, sit there in your
patent leather chair-
dark as sun-beat skins
hanging on racks like bone,
cold as love-like illusions
you carve yourself in stone.