Complicit Poetry

What if poems embraced, rather than repudiated, technology, capitalism, and evil.

Instead of always striving for beauty,
depth and humility,
connection and transcendence, what if
in poems we embraced superficiality?
Reinforced self-absorption? What if
our poems advanced half-baked
or even completely faked “observations”
from nature or personal experience,
completely invented a convenient past,
leveraging the fact that no one knows anything
about anything, let alone us
to fabricate literary effluvia
compacted into digestible anecdotes
efficient and delicious
and artificial as Skittles
perfectly alchemized to ask nothing more
difficult of ourselves or any reader
than what upmarket marketing copy
asks before we, as poet, force conclusions
inherently complicit in materialist,
self-centered, individualist,
capitalistic psychopathy?
Or any other systemic evil?
Could such poems be good, in a sense,
in their uniquely transparent embodiments
of what we all do every day anyway,
at least in the lonesome wealthy West?

1. At river’s edge
   the egret’s silence suggests
   Be perfect or don’t go on living
   
   
   

2. Forgot my kid’s birthday
   due to work being intense
   and felt terrible
   until my boss gave me a bonus
   the entirety of which I spent
   on presents for my kid
   who forgave me for forgetting
   his birthday when he saw
   $2,500 expressed in toys
   
   
   

3. Above me, two eagles
   battling for the remains of a chipmunk
   yank my attention up from my phone
   where I was reordering the items
   that are for sale in my online shop
   so the ones most frequently bought
   by people would be at the top
   
   
   

4. Meditating, war
   dissolves into peace, and guilt
   metamorphoses into acceptance
   
   
   

5. Note to self: it’s the pursuit
   of money, not its acquisition
   that makes me worthy of love
   
   
   

6. Bullet holes in a beach towel
   Vomit saved in an ice cube tray

   Hammock slack in a windless yard

   Boom mic poking out of a rosebush
   Unused mousetrap bookmarking a Bible
   Breeze blowing through a cold, silent zoo
   Circle of sandbags protecting an elaborate sand castle
   
   
   

7. Adrien Brody
   
   Why go outside
   risking the cold
   to see the aurora borealis
   
   when I can experience
   otherworldly brilliance
   from home
   
   simply by bearing witness
   to the grounded zaniness
   of Adrien Brody
   
   in his many wonderful films.
   
   
   

8. War
   
   Covered in blood.
   Holding a chainsaw.
   Clinging tightly to nostalgia.
   Bending to the market’s whims.
   Wondering what they’ll think of me
   in heaven, where I’m definitely going.