Worldwise

They’ve engineered a manhunt for my alter ego!!!
I’m running on the fumes of reason
& being force-fed sanity
as supplement to a steady
diet of nothing
Watching myself regress to a hippie in toenails only
as necessary illusion replaces reason as that which sets man apart
from beast
As Stephen Hawking reads the Kama Sutra to audiences
awestruck to the point of lockjaw
As those who want to “find themselves” begin to look down shotgun barrels
As talkative parents are spoonfed the same laxatives better used on international playboys in full fertility mode
As people slowly but surely come to understand that
the only naivete in this world is thinking
it’s ever possible to be certain of anything,
& that the point of life is to avoid at all costs becoming that which you have always hated--
As the grunt recedes into the death mask
As personal sins stack themselves high as houses of cards
As the condemned man demands carrot juice
& applesauce for his final meal
While world leaders cannibalize gangrene & tarantula cupcakes in lieu of dolphin fondue,
Having hunted the world’s most dangerous game since they were old enough to refuse dessert--
As the line to the fountain of youth remains as long as the one
to the movie theater’s latest celebrity slasher
As the great woman behind the great man becomes the man in drag
As germ warfare remains as incomprehensible as a midget’s voyeur tactics
As teenage atheists confuse “rapist”
with “one who murders monks”
& as the best answer to the question “what have YOU done for the human race lately?”
becomes
“I’ve removed myself from it,”
The most depraved among us stalk ever-onward into tombs of our own making,
Scrawling decadent epitaphs in as unforced a prose as a death letter--
Encyclopedic as any faulty lobotomy
& as collaborative a will as any used to defeat a common enemy