POEM: Resident Residue

Turn your residence into residue
Your remains into resin, glue
Turn your hesitance into something new
Burn your lies right into you
Branded
Feels like I crash landed
Alien with a vaguely familiar hand
Staying in a strangely similar land
Depths in vaults, echoes and volleys
Odd plains and valleys
Give way to
Cold drains and alleys
Sewer grates and man-made hates
Washed to be broken dinner plates
Smashed and choking sinner mates
Elites shuffle feet, hem and haw
Spread their legs and change the law
Can’t make progress
Without cracking eggs
and skulls and jaws
Creepy crawly
At least until the creeping beast, unleashed has a chance to feast
Mr. and Mrs. John McDivitt said that mangy thing is diseased with a tisk and little a risk to their dignity and a most disapproving look to make clear they are both the least bit pleased
Shouldn’t have asked for it
Should have washed hands of this mess to prevent disease
White picket nightmare
Panic here and fury and despair over there
Your residence turns to residue
Your remains, to resin, goo
Burn your elements into something new
Mold and make them over
Branded
Trademarked
Marked down, on clearance, special, close-out, by the pound
Flesh and bone but someone else’s
Too, so, awfully selfish
Throbbing hearts and all the connected parts
It often ends as it starts
At the same time
In the same way
Just another embryo at the end of an umbilical: one foot in the womb, other in the grave
One foot forward and progress is made
Don’t take a job and then looked to get paid
Don’t take a hand and expect to get laid
Take a life and get made
Kingpin
Playing ten pin
With a steel ball and magnetic pins
Dogmatic thinking pins our ears back
Pinprick or get sick, Jack
Time for a checkup
Just to check in
Check yourself
Living check to check

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