It’s hard to get the government
job misdirecting migrating geese
but there might be an opening
for an orderly in the Hall
of Erratic Data. If you can’t be
the hero weeping on a rock, try
a manikin in the surf shop.
Don’t give up, you too can be
among the first bed-wetters on Mars!
You too could paint the stars
haloing the head-bonked cartoon duck.
Admittedly the hours are so long
at the Ward of Cracked Hearts,
you don’t know when you’re working or off,
if you’ll ever get paid but you’re not
in it for the money, are you?
You didn’t spend years reading
Herodotus in safety goggles,
doing sit-ups in French, titrating
one smelly thing with another
just so you could move out
of your cardboard box, did you?
You didn’t dress as Hiawatha
for the follies just for valet
parking for your Lexus. It takes
years of sacrifice to become
a herder of bats, collager
of litter, finder of found poems,
not just yours but those people’s
who call themselves your parents,
who were lucky enough to find you
in the bottom of the cereal box
instead of a coupon for 35 cents off
the same twiggy cereal. Didn’t
I see a want-ad for a naked
exterminator although I’m not sure
there’s much chance for advancement.
But advance you will as all matter does
towards angelic form, the cement mixer
into the dove, complexity to simplicity,
even the king of beasts towards moon dust,
the soul to its freedom. I’m proud of you
as I am of the declarative leaves
that fall and rise up scarlet and green
in an economy all their own.