Sunday in the City

This one up-to-date, hip and with-it City guy,
every time he’d have a real dumb thought,
would, in his best “Top 40” voice, exclaim,
“And the hits keep’a comin’!”

One certainly not-off-the-rack ruler
who would sometimes indulge in the unnatural act
of pondering the vagaries, the pluses and minuses
of the exercise of power, was presented with a
collection of complaints from the people, regarding
the sloppiness of those charged with the collection
of garbage; the King lit up a Tootsie Roll, gazed pensively
into the regal distance and mused, “Do they really expect
the fastidious to seek such positions?” (puff, puff.)

In some circles there is very little difference
between a man in torn pants and an after-thought.
 

Ponder, ruminate, and otherwise
reflect-with-the-cows on this:
In certain contests, in certain galaxies,
only those participants can win who do not enter.

Passing the park last night,
my sleeve was grabbed by the hand of a chap
who leaned in low and told me that he was now
so intellectually stripped and impoverished that
he was actually “Living on borrowed memories.”

J.