INDIFFERENCE

Escalate clovers in shafts of gray,
the most peaceful revenge is indifference,
not the sour, not the bitter kind,
not even the sweet mama baboon substance abuse kind,
but indifference, downright bland and dull
indifference--we've all melted away into
nothingness,
like sitting on a strange grandmother's crocuses
one afternoon in a wheelchair,
sipping coffee through a straw,
loud music in the background,
the Alabama blues,
like an old man masturbating in a corner
in front of timid grammar school girls,
there is a sudden urge to uphold the law,
but not knowing or wondering how,
should I go to a cemetery or
should I be a frog, polite and serious,
never mixing politics with digestion--
wrong, wrong, we are all brothers and sisters,
sometimes getting into each other's way,
like stepping on ants,
looking for some suburban nightmare dream,
sticking out like metal roses,
oozing sex,
there is a new perversion under way,
constructed in the supermarket images,
defined by the Reagan administration,
rejoicing in its immoral ecology,
facing the North pole,
remember the stars, darling,
do you hear the wind blowing over
the Connecticut river, the buffoons,
the lightheaded entertainment, the sea of tears?
let's remember this day like a 4th of July
celebration of financial independence
or some such other obscenity
indifferent to nomenclature--
mama, this is indifference.

                                                July 24, 1986
                                           --Alexander Shaumyan