Monday, April 3, 2017

PENTAGRAM

In the freezing gray abandoned stadium,
deep in the bombed-out

downtown section
of your poverty-stricken reptile brain,

there is still—a great roaring
cheer that keeps spontaneously rising

from the creaking, dilapidated
ghost-haunted grandstand

where your mom and your dad
and your mom and dad's moms and dads

are all sitting in a specific
pattern, whitish translucent,

sucking toothless
on chalky candy cigarettes

and dust-coated Ringpops
they can't taste anymore.

And every time
you even so much as

set a foot in the game—
you can hear them

put down the concessions
and resume howling it, tongueless, at you:

Military, Medicine,
Church, Law,
Economy!

Military, Medicine,
Church, Law, 
Economy!

What else on this earth 
will your words be worm-
food for?

Every B-
plus you get
could be an A-minus;

and even the A-pluses—should be 
coming a bit
quicker!