American Gothic

The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth — it is the truth which conceals that there is none.The simulacrum is true.=Ecclesiastes, from Baudrillard's The Precession of the Simulacra.

It used to be the sky
and vast dominion meant
this side next, fill it up or erase it.
All the water in the far off sea was clean
under and outrageously deep, freshening the edges.
Once upon a time mom and dad
could fill a car for the weekend
with gum and wrappers
as children fell asleep in the corners,
jarred and blinking in the glow
of good intentions.
There was no where to run, no real need to
and plenty of jargon to fill the time.
Nothing needed to be done about
the same old secrets: engine on, engine off.
Easy does it and upsy daisy in the rigamarole,
we kept the getty-up and go
in the thingamajig under the hood.
Time doesn't pass in these juke boxes anymore,
there's more fidget in a pesky market
than on the streets where everyone used to ride
look no hands and by the seat of the pants
all torn and socks full of thorns.
The weeds mattered more than the sanctions
when girls got up slow and boys grew up thin.
Way back when a window was mostly pegs and putty
instead of glide and shine, no one minded a crack.
No one bothered to count the missing bits
of paint or the patches on a pair,
it was expected. Life needed to end somewhere.
We could stitch the universe with a thread,
organize the world with a rake and we sure did.