Monday, March 20, 2017

RHYME SCHEME

It's weird to consider—
but the 21st century
won't have its own
list of Greatest Novels.

Looking back, it'll have been
half Wild West, and half—
just put your most 
recent foot forward.

Authors will have
coasted a while
on good looks,
then on font choices,

then on Fountainhead references,
then on the sheer tyranny
of repeatable aesthetic decisions.
While the public

will have felt just like
some show
which must go on
straining—to get

so much as a yawn out
without being tossed
in the architect's
Modern Library castle prison—

except, there won't be any
Tale of Two Cities-style
tower dungeons left
by then, either.

just these endlessly reproducible
things—called rooks 
flanking the corners
of checkered floors.

And sure, those things
can travel as far out
as the minds of their
masters could dare

to imagine—as long
as it's always
only ever
in a straight line.