The Scars of Utopia
by jeffrey mcdaniel
If you keep taking stabs at utopia, sooner or later
there will be scars.
Suppose a thermometer measured contentment. Would you
slide it under your tongue and risk being told
your serenity was on par with a thirteenth-century farmer?
Would you abandon your portable conscience,
the remote control that lets you choose who you are,
lets you pick the right personality for every occasion?
I wish we humans cared more about how we sounded
than how we looked. Instead of primping before mirrors,
we'd huddle in echo chambers, practicing our scales.
As a kid, I thought the local amputee was dying in pieces,
that his left arm was leaning against a tree in heaven
waiting for the next part to arrive. There should be Band Aids
for what you don't know; whiskey breath mints so sober people
can fit in at wild parties; a Smithsonian for misfits:
an insomniac's mucky pillow hanging over a narcoleptic's
drool cup, the teeth of an anorexic like a white picket fence
designed to keep food from trespassing. I wish the White House
was made out of mood ring rock reflecting the health
of the nation. I want an atheist night at every church. Needle
exchange programs. And haystack exchange programs too.
Emotional baggage thrift stores. A Mt. Rushmore
for assassins. I'm sick of strip malls and billboards. I dream
of a road lit by people who set themselves on fire.
No asphalt. No rest stops. Just a bunch of dead grass
with footprints so deep, like a track meet in wet cement.
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