Autumn 2021. On a Friday night I stumbled into a dinner invitation of acquaintances from the professional, upwardly mobile types one encounters at University and in middle-management positions, all settled in modest wealth. When traversing in the landscapes of academic families it is unsurprising to find vapid opinions. These are products of a restaurant visit.
Look at them
Robber-Baron-Bastards
All heads in the air
Have you seen the offspring of theirs
Of People once at least adequately cunning
As to tread over corpses for fortune
With outsourced heroisms
Borrowed from Rome
Colloquially called Fascist
Prefigured on the throne in the Tuileries
It’s today’s children have disavowed it as import
Behold the objectimpermanency of infantilized second spawns
Trained in marketing psychology
From childhood on
Uneasy around their daddy’s Rottweiler
Who has just once bitten the wrong kid
But only after mauling longstanding rivals at the playground
Demanding a share of the sandbox
A Rottweiler at whose backyard grave they still weep
With embarrassing nostalgia for those organic better days
“T’was a bad boy indeed” they will say
“But putting it down like that
It’s just a shame!”
Oh how readily they will ditch well groomed poodles
For frontier trained Rhodesian Ridgebacks
Bred by the distant memories of the enslaved
As soon as the tides show slight signs of change
How rightfully reluctant
Even to as little
As putting on muzzles
For who knows when the jaws are needed
In logical reaction to the question
Just how the goods got gotten
Today those children
Uneasy ’round Roman salutes
Are accustomed to throwing hands up happily
With the rest of the upper-middle-class elite
All learnt their Latin
All from the same alma mater
Now sit at well decked dinner tables
Watch their geese hatch golden eggs
Talking history
With stakeholder affect
Toddlers
All and total
At least above them
The first borns have no shame
To skip washing their hands
Past the slaughter
Yes!
Keep your spare change
And your hands washed in holy water
But don’t expect us then to sympathize
With petty complaints and marketing campaigns
The places are aplenty
Where ten year old adults
Learn again and again daily
Their hungers significance
Looking up at their reflection
In the bottom of your silver plates.