Poem: The Right Kind of Person

If you’re the kind of chappie who believes in predestination, a Calvinist narrative

to be unspooled one frame at a time, this poem

is not for you.

If you are the kind of lassie who believes in free will, a steadfastly laissez-faire Locked fantasy

to be imagined and enlivened one moment at a time, this poem

is also probably not for you.

This poem is for the third kind of person who believes in a logically impossible hybrid – in which

the way to get through this life

with the best results

is to cozy and kowtow and obsequiously bow down to

the rich and powerful.

 

If it were as easy as fellating wealthy nubs, life’s winners would be as plentiful as blackberries.

There’s more to it, as the smooth operators will tell you.

The trick, you will learn, is that of the professional submissive:

The dominator silently secretly knows he is “in charge” only because his conquest allows it,

all the while strenuously behaving as though it were not so, as though the subject who kneels before the verb has no choice.

But trembling, aquiver with the frisson of power running through and over

the vibrating vessel, the glowing cathode ray tube that requires Another

to be activated fully,

the fallen lower pliant one gives the signal,

the eyebrow, the secret code

and right then all present understand what is really happening.

And that’s very comforting, isn’t it?

 

Machiavellian friend, you who view the world through a lens now addled and smudged

by pharmaceuticals and a darkening cloud in residence,

you understand the game better than most.

You know that to make it to wherever it is you think you’re going,

you must be

the right sort of fellow.

For most of us, figuring out that particular puzzle requires a lifetime of failure.

Talented man, broadcaster of divinity, we’re afraid that you’ve become precisely

the right sort of fellow.

 

And maybe you were all along.

Maybe the qualifications were lurking inside that beautiful artist suit and behind those stylish glasses. Their decorative elan

disguises their utility and distracts us from their talismanic power.

They are a ceremonial pelt

to be worn proudly as a Boy Scout chest medal.

Your eyes need the polished glass because of how you used them

as a boy

and a man. And now. Always.

Squinting at notes on a staff, where the on-top-of or just-under makes all the difference.

Now they see the truth.

Who you know and who you call your friends and

who has the ability to

add you to his collection

is what makes all the difference,

or

depending on if this poem is for you

none at all.