American Kitsch

a camera zooms into the atmosphere

and all that’s left to see here

is piles and piles and

miles and miles of

trash

decades of yesterday’s treasures

the must-have crazes of every generation

each fly-by-night design trend

mass-produced and reduced

to stacks on top of stacks

decaying but

alarmingly slowly

a curious octopus investigates my old toothbrush

he shakes his bulbous head and

mutters something about incompetence

as a delivery truck rumbles down my block

forgotten but not gone

so much stuff

like my wedding dress

one thousand three hundred dollars

better spent on rent

or a trip to Vegas

where the odds aren’t so against us

but dopamine is cheap

coffee, candy, whiskey

I could buy my dreams

if I could afford them (which I can’t):

Margaritaville’s a happy plastic island

Disney World is perfect plastic magic

and I’m sold

I want to go there

meanwhile old trucks rust in junkyards

satellites collide like race cars

and my windshield has a crack so large

I can hardly see where I’m going

consumerism is our national religion

and I try but I can’t escape it

I love it as much as I hate it

the rise and fall of American kitsch

looked better on Elvis

now we’re accelerating toward some

ominous high-tech destination

with Botox-stuck smiles on our faces but

no matter how many products I purchase

my vanity project is failing

I am aging

my hair is greying

I sat at my kitchen table

pen scratching on printer paper

I wrote

“life is a process,

art is truth

joy is real

humanity is kind

and there is nothing left to buy”

then I set it on fire

particulates clogging the night sky

I scoop my packages off the porch and

look up with tired eyes

start my car’s ailing engine

peer through my broken windshield

and drive