poets – Kevin Trent Boswell

Billionaires and Dumb Birds

People today are too stupid to breathe

Modern persons in this country
Are like that old wive’s tale
About turkeys drowning in the rain
Because they are too stupid to
Stop drinking the rain

It’s a dumb idea, born of dumb people
Who listen to dumb things
They heard from other dumb people

Turkeys, as any decent hunter will tell you,
Are notoriously difficult to hunt

You can get reasonably close to them
If you’re unarmed;
Not too close, but close enough to
Admire them

But pull out a rifle or a handgun
And watch them scatter

Go looking for them after that,
Good luck

Set up a hunting blind to still-hunt them,
You’ll be waiting for a while,
A long while

Stalk them,
You’ll be walking a long way,
For a long time,
Trying not to snap twigs
And rustle leaves

So, how is it that a supposedly
“Dumb” bird
Knows what a shotgun is?
Or a .308 rifle, .30-06, 35 caliber?

Why does a bird you eat at Thanksgiving
Show no alarm if you suddenly
Whip out a stick and wave it around,
But when you pull out a
Smith and Wesson .38,
It takes off

You telling me that’s dumb?

Now, modern Americans…
I can easily picture them
Drowning in the rain

Now, I’m not saying that
Smart Americans don’t have plenty of
Good reasons for wanting to die,
For wanting to tune out

After all, the smart ones are
Surrounded
By idiots who are ready, willing, and able
To swamp the boat
For everyone

Those who worship the opinions
Of people who make
Billions of dollars a year, but
Have no compassion or empathy

I mean, if you also
Make billions of dollars per year,

And you regard the people
Who helped you get there
As pests to be managed,
Then sure, you should probably listen,
When some other vapid cunt
Who makes billions per year
Speaks

But if you make less than
A hundred grand per year,
And most people do,
Regardless of what Google tells you,

And if you genuinely believe
In things like reciprocity and loyalty,
Then maybe don’t listen
To sociopaths?

I don’t know,
Call me crazy

Maybe the guy who made billions
Off the backs of average people,
And regularly threatens
To fire them, should they miss a few days,
Because they were sick,
Or because they were late a few times,
Or because they tried to unionize,

Maybe that guy isn’t your friend?

Mr. and Mrs. Blue Collar America?

Seems to me,
That to believe that a billionaire
Is capable of thinking about
What’s good for anyone
Other than themselves,

Well, you would have to be
Just about as stupid
As a bird that tries to drink rain
Until it drowns

Except, such birds don’t exist

If they did, they’d have gone extinct
A long time ago

That kind of behavior is not what
Evolution regards as being
“Selected for”

But poor people
Believing in “Trickle Down Economics,”

Now, that is a real thing

Because a movie star told them;
Not just a movie star,
But also a TV star;
Not just a movie and TV star,
But also “the prehzidehnt
Uv tha Yoonyted Staytes”

That was forty years ago

Things have gotten much worse since then

But these things take time

Should start “trickling down”
Any day now

Just like the rain down a
Turkey’s neck

Americans, most of them,
Are in fact, too stupid to breathe

They detest bad news and
Pesky facts

Shoot the messenger,
Not the problem, itself

Trust the guy who commits
To the lies

Look down your nose at the ones who
Try to give you health insurance
And education

The rains are coming

Sky’s cloudy and dark,
Winds picking up

A lot of people are soon going to be found
Lying out in the open,
In the woods, on the streets,
In their backyards, on football fields,
In parks and playgrounds and
Parking lots

Dead
Drowned

Reasonable people will have tried
To warn them

That’s not rain “trickling down”
In gushes and torrents

That’s the streaming urine
Of people who will make
More money, today, alone

Than you will in your lifetime

Much more

Billionaires are, as the British say,
“Taking the piss”
On average Americans

And everyday Americans
Are eating it up

Or rather,
Drinking it down

And since they can’t sustain themselves
On a steady stream of
Billionaire piss

They’ll drown

Too stupid to stop drinking

Too stupid to breathe

Turns out,
That behavior is
“Selected against”

Please Hold

I just spent one hour
And five minutes on hold

It couldn’t be helped,
It was something that I had to do,
Or I’d have been in bad shape
For weeks to come

I sat and listened to that
Goddamned hold message
For an hour and five minutes

They repeated it
Every twenty seconds;
I counted

“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are busy assisting other customers.
“Please hold and we’ll be with you
“As soon as possible.
“There are currently more than
“Three callers ahead of you.”

I put my phone
On the ‘speaker’ setting,
And laid it on my belly

I was smart and plugged it
Into the charger,
Figured I would
Kill a few birds with one piece
Of terminal boredom

I added another layer of
Multitasking to my
Very minor ordeal

I read Bukowski’s
Love is a Dog from Hell
While I waited

Forty minutes in…

It was frequently difficult
To concentrate, with that
Stupid message, every
Twenty seconds—“We’re just a
“Tiny bit sorry…
“All of our agents are
“Pretending to be busy, so we
“Can feel like we’re important,
“And squeeze a few more bucks out,
“By not paying any more staff than
“We absolutely have to.
“There are three callers ahead of you.”

But the breaks in my focus,
They gave me an excuse to jump back
Several lines and reread what I
Had just read, to make sure that I
Hadn’t missed anything

The boredom,
The stupid interruptions,
The longing for a life that is not
A prisoner of circumstance,
A slave to bureaucracies,
To be able to do something else…
Any fucking thing that is something
Other than this stupid shit…

“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are playing solitaire and circle jerk.
“Please hold onto your sanity…
“Or don’t; we could all use a good laugh.
“There are currently
“Two callers ahead of you…
“We think. We could be wrong. [Shrugs.]
“Who the fuck knows, really?
“We’re not fucking philosophers.”

It went well with the poetry,
It matched Chuck’s experience
Of life

Always waiting
Waiting on life to just
Come off it, already

Forty-five minutes

“We’re sorry, but all of our agents
“Are placing bets on horses,
“Arguing with whores,
“Getting drunk and feeling lonely,
“Feeling happy, angry, nothing at all.
“Anything but assisting customers.
“Please hold and we’ll be
“Finished shitting as soon as possible.
“There is one caller ahead of you.”

Maybe that last part was Charles
Talking to me,

I forget

I do know that he said
(And I’m paraphrasing here,
Paraphrasing wildly… speculatively,
Because ol’ drunk Chuck said
That’s the only way to do anything)

He said that we’re all sitting here,
Knowing, knowing that life,
The real life, is available, out there,
If only the small-minded
Would get out of the way,
And let the rest of us have it

We’re not entitled to it,
We realize that;
No one is entitled to
Anything

But the rich, the powerful,
And the boorish, dreary,
Unimaginative oafs,
They seem to have
All the access
To all the best stuff

But they’re too greedy,
Too fearful, too lacking in vision
To step aside and let someone else
Have a crack at the good stuff;
They feel they never have enough,
Or that only they can
Handle it all properly

And so,

Wait

And

Wait

Some

But I got it done, ⠀
The thing⠀

And now, I can
Wait⠀
⠀
On something else

A Collage of Chimeras and Phantasms, by Kevin Trent Boswell, available on Amazon — Available on Amazon, 216 pages

I Know It’s Frustrating

I know you’re angry; I don’t blame you
It feels like American freedom is spent
But please try to remember that it’s illegal
To talk about killing the president

I know it’s hard watching these racists;
To a coward, sadist, false king, they bent
But it’s still a crime to make idle threats
About murdering the stupid president

I don’t ever want you to get locked up
So, don’t do something you’ll later lament
Don’t even jokingly say to someone
That you’re planning to kill the president

Seriously, don’t do it. No, really… don’t.