Feel free to add your peculiar savor
To unearth and qualify the latent significance of the thing
According to your own lights
Don the mask of the sad lion
And prosecute the thin materials
Indicate the madness of taking sword to salt sea wave
The rarities that have garnered unearned commendation
The mystery of lives celebrated or notorious
The astonishing fecundity of nature and culture
Everybody possesses the wherewithal to hazard an appraisal
And while it may be true that pitching beats hitting
Hurlers don’t hang ready to drop from trees
And you don’t get many sluggers to the pound
Mostly you just say wait’ll next year
Victory always happens and always too defeat
So be ready to reappraise
You don’t exactly succeed at getting it right
For doing well transcends the category of success
Nor error does not deny the beauty of phenomena
The success of a sunset
A question not to be asked
Nature flawless by definition
The successful embroidery bejeweled on QE I’s gown
A question to be asked
Product of a thousand woman-hours
Appreciate the gorgeousness and the oppression
But if you’re going to talk about say literature
Catch a clue of what a sentence is
If painting a color
If music a sound
Learn it from somebody and teach it
And lots of folks succeed at awfulness or inconsequence
The palm for silentest embezzlement
For neatliest beveled bezel
For cleanliest beheading
A million likes for the influential sniff test
And which is worse the greatly horrible or the needlessly trivial
And facts like these are worth observing
You can see when the mechanical garbage can lifter
Drops items in the street to remain unretrieved
A torment of egg shells and waxy grease-pucks and coffee grounds
The metered traffic light that measures rather poorly
The autotuned voice with the glib consistency of synthetic motor oil
You can hear the exhausted child drifting upon toys
Refusing to nap
Or the voter hollering hoarse at the cult event
You can watch while the hopeless drunk
Fills another glass with hope or guzzles from the bottle
And advertisements baited with the joy of life
Or with the fear of exile
Switch to drumming away at worthless crap
The agricultural revolution was pretty bad overall
Bronze age bad
Iron age bad
Industrial revolution bad
Digital revolution bad
Twenty-first century bad
And the twentieth no picnic
And the nineteenth and the eighteenth
And the seventeenth and the ninth and the first
And forget about the BCE
The rotten crowns and shabby potentates and miserable emperors
And worse their craven lackeys
Scribes of decrees not their own
Enforcers of the arbitrary
Encouragers of the worst
Ah save us from the loyal
Who believe their little banner worth dying and killing for
Or hollowly claim as much
Invested in the relative viscosity of blood and water
Sacramental sorcery of blood
The formulae of obscuration that efface the language of illumination
The language of freedom
But finding a healthful use for mold growing on oranges was good
And the Venuses of Willendorf and Urbino are good
People can clap their hands and wish the sun good morning
And kiss and caress and find a topic for laughter
And the child wakes fussy from the nap well oh well
Before long it’s row your boat and life is but a dream
Aldraysom pmisti effrent sine- or cvmwoflux
Soother than the creamy curd
Lots of times you see a driver stop
To help somebody fix a flat
And most days a truck drops off the mail
Despite snow rain heat gloom of night and the politics of destruction
The song is better than the sheet music
The image is better than the painting
Even the play is better than the performance
And Quinnies is gone shuttered and closed
That had the best shrimp and grits butter and salt
Replaced by a Subway
Maybe they weren’t the best but they were damn good
And everybody dies upon a heaving sea of beauties
Salty but prolific