Spectacle – Caroline Recker

It is the utter insult of the thing: 

A four-lettered audacity. A noun. A verb. A command—  

Bereft of it? How sad! 

But have you tried having instead? 

 

Was yours earned? Or granted by cosmological grace 

when particles moved particles moved particles to make you? 

(Unsubtle, oblivious as you are.) 

You won without merit. Your resinous well-wishes are unwanted, 

sticky and sappy, 

the bristles of your brush clumping as you paint me with your platitudes. 

They are bitter, acrid. Blistering. 

But O, what blissful silence! 

 

Tonight you will feast on freshly shorn hens, 

Their butchered bones and crackling skin a sacrifice to the twin gods
Chance and Circumstance 

You’ll dance in circles around me 

Cavorting like the demons you so despise 

Filling the skies with fistfuls of white flurries, 

Crooning all the while 

Hope is a thing with feathers