Glad to Pay the Cost

Whacking at the world with stick and fist and kick –
eruptively shellacking it as if the problem were
intransigent behavior on the part of its insentient
stuff: enough. Problems don't exist. Activity
assisted by intention stirs the pot: but any recipe
for what it’s stirring, darling: long forgot – if ever
known. All this querulousness is your own.

Too much twitch and tic – switch it quick to other
channels: cushion its sharp prick with flannel of
a sweeter softer swirl. The stew, the world,
the stuff won't change: but you've sufficient range
to act your stop-and-go illusions to a gratifying finish.
Eat your satisfying spinach – quick-sauté in olive
oil and garlic. Exchange your sadomasochistic

Marley chains for ropes of cultured pearls. Be two
boys, and then six girls – then a rhino in a snit:
then a wino come ecstatically upon a split –
Dom Perignon – iced just right with waiting flutes –
proffered by Brad Pitt, quite naked – for the sake
of your exclusive self. Drag the whole mess
off the shelf. Let it squirm about like snakes on

ladders – chop it madly into gluons with an ax.
Now relax. Today you helped a friend to keep on
keeping on the planet. At times your heart was made
of granite: then of glue – and now of something like
that stew for which the recipe is lost. But he’s
still here, and so are you, and you've been shown
the price, and you are glad to pay the cost.