Barely the Minority?
Barely the Minority?
By Joe Cloyd
They’ll watch tv like blind dogs…
Buy lottery tickets
Listen to the same old songs…
And bitch about taxes under
The compulsion of stingy despair… and piss
Away their coins in slot machines
As they piss themselves…
Bitter
Yet enjoying their bitterness.
Hopeless
Yet functioning despite their hopelessness.
Absurd
Yet unaware of their absurdity.
Deranged
Yet seeing dignity and entitlement in it.
Ignorant
Yet proud of their ignorance…
Finding comfort
In the certitude
That only half-ass religion and
Patriotism can bring…. On Sundays
It gets them a 25 percent discount
Off of the privilege
Of a personal relationship
With the savior.
On some days it’s something
That they don’t even think about.
And on other days, it’s the only
Thing that sustains them
As they patiently wait
For their compensation at the end of days.
This isn’t a town somewhere.
This isn’t a city somewhere.
These are a multitude of lonely enclaves
Of humanity…
Barely the minority
Yet
A cheap
And a reliable source of
Renewable destruction
For everyone and everything else.
Hey Joe. It’s apparent you can actually string words together, and this is better than your Michael Jackson one, but I’d really like to see more depth to your themes. From earlier comments I understand your negative thoughts on ambiguity so it makes sense that you would hit each line short and directly, but I think you ought to consider that when you talk short, fast, and direct, you need a theme that is going to evoke a quick and passionate reaction from the audience. The theme content did not really do that for me, though I could tell the words were trying to. Also, stop using so many ellipses.
It’s good to meet a fellow practitioner of the ellipses, my favorite (though perhaps technically-improperly used by myself) punc. for joining thoughts and transitioning. I even did something sacreligious to some by droping one dot on the ellipses and calling it an ellip (..)…sort of in-between the effects of a period and the ellipses.
Nice work here. I enjoyed the direct communication of your style and the structure and almost speech-like ouerve. It doesn’t always have to be poetic devices here and there gumming up the funnel with abstractions. As an imagist, surrealist, and collage-poet i try to conglomerate various styles and modes of language expression to make a unique idiom.
I didn’t have any problem with the depth of the theme. Perfect title brings steers reader into point of poem’s direction right off bat. You did your homework and research and thought out this piece quite a bit before writing…i appreciate the sweat here. Of course, being a one-time History/Poly Sci major i would get this one quicker with the whole socio-economic situation. Good read. Thx.
Yeah I actually didn’t consider the last six lines as much as I now think I should have. That sort of did add the depth I wanted out of it, but I’ll bitch about ellipsis til the sun goes down. 🙂
nice slam. I like it.