Happy New Year 2o10

In 3 hours Taipei 101
will ignite As yet mankind's
tallest monument to Business Savvy
and our defeat of Gravity

In 3 hours the building
an oversized Flashbulb
will go off And our rough
Anno Domini 2009
will be laid to rest
with 2008 of the others
some dismal some blessed

Already 10 years of this shit century We'll
eat ourselves into the ground
before the next

Homo sapiens sapiens
We are

Hardly sapiential
Knowing only how to grasp at colorful things
And put them in our Mouths

Mouths serve us to speak
Not even 1 percent inspired speech

99-plus percent planning
Arranging for Input

Of more colorful
things Baubles
To put in our Mouths

Down into the Gullet
of Dust we go
a paroxysm of Cannibalism
Soon 20 billion of us
Fossilized white and brown
Fossilized in the soil
whence we came

End Fruit of Enlightenment Man's
Hope, of Communist Man
Free-Market Man
Blubbering Family Values Man

All buried under a Toys 'R Us
Apt garish mausoleum
for Homo puerilis americanus
Homo invictus sinicus
Homo sick sad ape
Too smart for its own good

Mortar fire between Two Rivers
Mortified Francis Fukuyama
And all the Apologists
of Walmart

To bury Gobekli Tepe
That was a piece of Wisdom
9,000 B.C. too late
already for a reprieve too late
for the mash-up material being
Man

From dust having come
To ashes returned
A poison wind rakes over
The dead steppes of Asia

10 years into our last Mad Dash
A final spate of Happy Meals
Screaming baboon Imperial
machinations
Soundbite justifications
We grasp at the last colorful things
To stuff in the last Mouths