Another day in waiting rooms. The doctor eyes the suture,
Then bills you for a thousand bucks—says, “Think about the future.”
The nurses smell of Calvin Klein, the waiting room of whiskey.
We stagger into taxicabs, our faces green and frisky.
I gave my love a cherry, and it floated in the cocktail.
We chatted till the bars were closed and broke it off by e-mail.
I gave my love a dining set. I gave my love a chicken.
She smothered it in flour and eggs, and so our waistlines thicken.
The news comes every morning, and the news is always bad.
The men on television smirk while slowly going mad.
A rumor spreads by radio, infecting like a virus
Till counter-rumors put it down. It rises like Osiris,
Twice as strong and tough as hell in its present incarnation.
I listened in a groggy haze, and then I switched the station.
We gave up dreams of second cars, of porches and cyclone fences,
Of farting out the aftermath of coffee and cheese blintzes,
Of jobs downtown and mortgages on houses in the valley—
All for a lurid fantasy of blowjobs in an alley.
The news comes every morning, but the morning’s history
Like pyramids, trench warfare, and the “new economy.”
William Montgomery went to work, then blew his monthly paycheck
On a Nudie Cohen outfit made of sequins and white spandex.
Katie saw him and laughed so hard she gurgled through the bourbon
She sipped while she was driving home in her new gray Suburban.
You can crack equations; you can calculate the function
And end up scanning horoscopes for a distant star’s conjunction.
You can buy insurance; you can keep away from matches;
But still, one day the lightning strikes and burns the place to ashes.
