It was “so fun” getting used to you.
—John Ashbery
Debates we used to believe we’d
pick up another night. Coming
soon. Let this be a warning to
us all. The whole world is out
to get us. Never had we
sounded more true to
ourselves. A few of
us wouldn’t sound
again. We always
assumed such
drudgery’d
prevail, but
yet it turns
out what ails
us is what we
also ignore the
most. What per-
fect hosts we were,
however; or else, I was.
Once. Isn’t it ridiculous to feel
so astonished at what we always
saw coming? Several years later, I
convinced myself that all of my elegance,
my grace, had finally returned. And full throttle;
back like gangbusters. But then, “Thud!” Up pops
another “act of God” so cataclysmic that mere fatalism
just won’t cut it. Perhaps, instead, apocalypticism? Seis-
mically inelegant, how clumsily we lumbering humans roll!
