Poetry

A Copy Writer's Fever Dream Apostasy:
What the Comet Said.
by Phil Rockstroh

The collective narrative of the world falters,
Its thoughts grow dim,
Drooling idiot progeny ascend the fast food-chain throne,
And the world wends towards endless war and between meal snacks...as the imbecilic infant-prince of the Empire of Endless Burgers nurses his near beer, reaches for another pretzel, and fumbles for the remote to watch another story about dinosaurs....

Why this totem culled from the Cretaceous?
Why this lumbering tale bellowed into the devouring darkness?

Content to graze on the green landscape of comforting mythologies, my triceratops appetite was as immense as a seven mile-wide asteroid—but came a comet of doubt—that crashed into the Yucatan Peninsula of my world-view, forever changing the topography of my desires.

But how will I explain myself: This loss of appetite for the everyday menu of death, for these Value Meals of comfort-food lies?

My high priests of self-invention besieged the boiling sky: "Will the drifting ash of immolated verities descend into soil...to yield a risen vegetable kingdom of abundant truth, a verdant narrative, singing like the severed head of Orpheus floating down stream past the ruins of the Brand Name Nation?"

Or will the Redeemer God of Product Placement rise again?
Broken and crumbled Dionysus of Doritos will you not sprout the tender green shoots of a new marketing campaign?—Oreos...torn apart like Osiris, will your scattered crumbs be gathered and reconstituted under the omniscient gaze of the Sun God of Sugary Snack Foods?—The body of Christ can be taste-tested and improved, "try our new mocha flavor communion wafer," the copy writers of the old order implore...while the anti-Christ Pez Dispenser gathers his armies....

Here the voice of the comet supersedes: "...Belief, Hope, Faith will not cause my world-altering mass to be sucked back into infinite space.... A sip from the Big Gulp Holy Chalice will not heal the dying Grail-King of your empty appetite:

"You have Super-Sized your order of Extinction.

Belief in your gods banished doubt and diffidence, bestowed evolutionary advantage...were your version of the tooth, claw, and armored hides of the doomed denizens of the Cretaceous, but this cannot shelter you from the anonymous fury of the sundering storm: Your insistence on their providence proved your undoing, Your insistence on their existence left you mistaking a full stomach for a leveling portion of divine grace...."

At these moments of prodigal pain what do we cry into the slavering darkness of ravening night?
Can our pleas be heard over the thunderous machinery of the encompassing void?

The gods of the old empire offered drive-thru-window epiphanies: They answered our prayers—instantly came the homilies of perpetual gratification—their voices crackling like a burning bush from the drive-thru-order-box.

Oh Lord of Hostess Twinkies—why have you forsaken us?

Overcooked in arrogance and oil:
The Empire of Endless Burgers is char: Stick a fork in it—it's done.