GREETINGS FROM A FAILED EXPERIMENT by Nick Greer
Greetings from the coast
where the ebb and flow
of markets govern which
crystals I weep at today.
This one wards off suffering
fools and their shopped bodies.
This one tells you it’s alright
to be an embarrassing archetype.
They hum like conspiracy, promising
the surety of a hotel room
far from ground zero.
Please, I whisper to the monorail, please
cure me of this unacceptable lack
of velocity. Do your worst, your best,
whatever your vectors think
might make us worthy
of the children we keep
legislating to candlelight.
Why must they continue
to trust the demographics
they will never become?
If you know the answer
they will let you have it
over and over and over
the waves of progress
make their sounds
just to make them.
Greetings from the country
its dog gone porches & empty silos
its common decency & pains
that will never quite be killed
unless you are chosen by the eagle
so it can live to see another term.
I am not him but I am not immune
to the witch’s finger of choice, getting
to be the one who gets to be the one
among other numbers. Better yet
take that all away and replace it
with the yellow thrill of finding
antique porn in the woods
which still happens if you believe
in the simple glint of rhyme.
Stay long enough in any one place
and you too will rust, mister automation,
but you won’t be long. Just enough
to wet your way down
this one horse you rode in on.
A quarter past the uneasy moment
with the man at the penny shop.
He asked for your home address
and this was the last straw.
Greetings from the childhood
an old friend reverse engineered
to sell squares made of other squares.
The hallway is endless
when you’re this small
and represented by a puppet
held up by expensive violence.
Peel your eyes away
from his chemical smile
and you’ll see the negative
haunting every birthday cake.
Don’t look so surprised
little surprises anymore.
This is what we climbed
the tallest tree to ascertain.
There is an island of plastic
the size of a friendly dictatorship
and nothing you can do about it
but essay on its aboutness. Next up
is acceptance and then the one after that
and then the singular joy of forgetting
your way home so you can be led back
by the voice of a patient
distant woman.
Greetings from the garden
not exactly a secret after all
these security cameras but still
somehow magical to find
a moody pocket of late afternoon
next to someone who shares
your same pathologies.
The only words between you now
are on the placards no one reads
except the sexy bureaucrat
in your head. Did you know
the creepers were imported
from a country this one funded
to devour itself? Just like the twin
snakes of their mythology
tattooed on the calf
of the woman ordering tea
at the kiosk in her best ingenue.
Her voice a welcome break
from the one the poet pretends to lose
so he can make a show of finding it
in the most common of places.
Here, she insists, here. Her hands
full of faces so important
they belong on more metal
than can be reasonably counted.
And there is your model hand
on my peeling arm, a reminder.
Not everything is an insult.
Greetings from the county fair
deep fried in its own gleeful ignorance
I’m told by the uncreased spines
on my shelf. What does a skyscraper know
about swimming in the sticky light
of fireflies and bygones. What’s worth
its weight in sugar to an upcoming
thunderstorm. I’ll show you
promises some juggalo in repose
among other genres of lying
that grow here like weeds
in forgotten concrete.
There is a comfort in paying
more than a thing is worth.
Of playing games you know
you’ll lose. An honesty
to the rigged backboard
that does nothing
to conceal itself.
At least here the funhouse
is fun or so I’m told by the boy
with the cotton candy smile
I wish I could remember being.
(8/18/24)