Poem by Michael Boughn

I.3.iv Economic reality

            “I don’t need therapy—I need money.”

                                    —student saying

You can’t earn enough in most

lifetimes to pay for the poetry

required to explain economics

to reality. If words could be worn

out and used up, crinkled in small

soiled balls or left emptied

and sticky in hornet infested

containers, economic reality

would be its tractatus, its ode

on an Grecian liar

ringing through hulls of democratic

bluster from mouths in swollen

red faces determined to pull

bootstraps of every errant pilgrim

into gravy free enterprise

of incarnate logos saturated

dispensation’s spiriutalized

saving accounts. Who remembers

economics is to home as divine

life is to distant archaeology

of theological midden heap

may be prepared for sudden

showing forth of hidden door

into transgalactic transfer of cold

words into apparition of deeper

encounter. Say, a parking

lot within the one you just left

your car in, a vast sealed tomb

vibe emanating into corners

and crevices while it gains

a reputation for ease of shopping

pleasure, free parking, and

authorized admission. Then economic

reality realizes the rent

is too low and moves increase of what

ever margin darkness brings to talk

of blue. Household debt, too

a mystery of subtle encounters

with manifestations of density

deficit, misses the train and winds up

trapped in some allegory of profligate

burghers astride equine

rectitude in the charge up

Consumption Hill. Gravy

as an elemental leads to formations

of fat cutting brigades and periodic

weigh ins designed to distract

attention from vacuous visions’

hallucinatory underground utopia

toward what people want and back.

What people want is an abyss

yawning with boredom and often

confused with questions of life

on other planets. Is it there? and how

many eyes does it have? Economic

reality is its human disguise

amid levers of power and stands

for distribution of terror and pain

beyond the usual kind, along with

accumulations and hordes, beyond

as they say, imagining, where all gravy

goes once it has been cut, or cut

loose, a true economic reality

awash in glory and righteous

affirmation of divine law,

or maybe just a general rule

or possibly an operating

principle, how fat always

flows, as part of the Grand

Design, up, which is where after all

 it belongs, in immaculate

dough-re-mi ascensions.

_____________________________

Michael Boughn appears in AlteredScale.com 1 and AlteredScale.com 2.

Michael Boughn, on the occasion of being shortlisted for Canada's Governor General’s Award for Poetry in 2011, was described in the Globe and Mail as “an obscure veteran poet with a history of being overlooked by the mainstream." He is the author of H.D.: A Bibliography 1905 - 1990 (University of Virginia, 1993) and co-editor (with Victor Coleman) of Robert Duncan's The H.D. Book (University of California, 2011), as well as being editor of Narthex and other stories by H.D. (BookThug, 2011). His recent book of poetry, Cosmographia - A Post-Lucretian Faux Micro-Epic (Book Thug, 2010), was shortlisted for the aforementioned Prestigious Prize at the same time his mystery novel, Business As Usual, was published by NeWest (Edmonton). Great Canadian Poems for the Aged Vol.1 Illus. Ed. is forthcoming from BookThug in 2012.