CL Bledsoe
2
The problem with following your dreams
is they usually end with clowns
with chainsaws for hands and your mother’s
face Pollocking chocolate sauce all over
the page, and that brings nothing but ants.
Just because I sell artisanal, locally sourced
nihilism, don’t mistake me for a capitalist.
I’m not even wearing sunglasses. We all know,
beneath the U2 soundtrack playing constantly
in the publishing houses, that money is as much
of an illusion as equality, justice, or our votes
counting. The reality is that everything looks
like leaves or a mistake if you squint enough.
The truest poetry is of compost. If we throw away
enough of our hours, we can pay for that reboot
of a sequel we never wanted to see, that pizza
that’s already making us sick but at least we didn’t
have to cook. Some asshole in a nicer house
than we’ll ever see will get rich. If we try
to rush him, our neighbors will never forgive us
for nudging his foot from their necks.
CL Bledsoe is the author of sixteen books, most recently the poetry collection Trashcans in Love (lulu.com, 2017) and the flash fiction collection Ray’s Sea World (lulu.com, 2017). He lives in northern Virginia with his daughter and blogs at NotAnotherTVDad.blogspot.com.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
Click here to visit our Kickstarter campaign, help us produce our 2018 list, and claim your reward!