The unsaid wants to speak.
It can never be happy about its situation,
To open its mind from what is closed
Like a rat trap pummeling toes
While the rat takes a ride in the spin cycle
Laughing how anyone can think
He could come clean.
We go back a ways, my friend, we argued
Like this through many redemptions,
Well not like this, where we refuse to talk,
Wouldn't ever agree to agree to disagree.
You're in another rat hotel
Positioning your cheese, while I
Make friends with cats, the most unreliable
Of thieves -- it doesn't matter
When there's tenements all the way to the river
And no one checks on the state of things
Where we sleep. Telling our truth
Has always been this kind of game,
To be adored and seen, and not to let the
Victim through the ripped out insect screen,
For too much compassion and there's none left
For me, too much kvetching and
The state of the world seems no one's fault
Except, inevitably, mine.
The fault is in our desire to suffer
Not being seen somehow as divine,
As divine as that of any fucker who squeezes
Plugs from laundromats tho the pay phones
Have been lifted, and a new invisible sheriff
Runs the town without us again.
It's not enough to note the glow
Of golden arches cross the grey horizon
Gives in French fries the only actual hope
We have, or shows to all how Moloch
Must be allowed to harvest our children,
Or even to dream of being manager is a relic
Of a time that even we have forgotten,
We who claim to forget nothing.
The glow is just a vision, a gift
For jackasses like us, to wend
Whatever stormy dramas we can weave
For the benefit of other people
Being imposed upon until they change
Or, kindly, pretend to,
The lie redeems whatever thing
Made it necessary, by turning true.
