Life is hard
without an all-night diner.
One must make allowances
for what looks worse than it is.
What is condoned,
what is condemned.
What the retrobates should do
is acquire a taste for the too-new-
to-ascertain-if-it's-good:
metaphysical flux,
subpreonic surprises,
fate's fatwas,
poetry's priorities,
radical oracles
conflating familiarity with clarity,
the apathists and the appeasers,
conjoined cojones,
subject only to inadequate penalties.
Privacy, mystery, retreat
or
coverup, shaming, control.
The pithy intolerability.
The space-cold futility of our sacrifices.
Admirable calculations,
unfortunately wrong.
How do you defend your portion
without denying the remainder?
Beguiled by the beginning,
we won't attend the end.