Rick in the Rainbow Lounge

Rick in the Rainbow Lounge
(Conservative Thinking)



Every day he’s there
Like good clockwork.

The equation is

Hard liquor and Coke on the one hand, while
The insulin pump pushes in on the other.

Pure poison and the health of medication
Are equally effective

In making him Not Rick
But a thin, brittle, opposite-of-autonomous object

A receptacle, a host, a tin bucket

A tool for the use of parasitic, living, liquid molecules
A plastic toy with which substances and light and shadows play.

--

He holds the scales outstretched and even.

Real justice is surely the limbo

Between a blind life and a death.

--

Truth is not the American way, and
Whether one thinks it is or not

Depends on the definition.

We get “truth” from the TV
Or sermons, seated next to our selves

Our practically identical family
Friends and FOX

Or we figure truth out
Like any other mathematics

That rainbows are made of water and sunshine

Refracted, and so
Are we.

--

Calculations can be objective, can be a little bit of safety.

Conservative thinkers can watch the most basic facts, the CSI shows, without guilt or anger

While the stoners stare at the pixelated, binary slickness of Showtime.

--

Don’t expect
Much more

Understanding

Than either of those, though. This is entertainment
Not active involvement, not evolution, not

Equality won for
The races, for the sexual differences.

The numbers, the digits in their heads
Won’t, can’t reach

That far.

They are fed with electronics and images
And the illusion of learning. They want to sit still.

--

Stay steady, Rick

On your stool. It was engineered with numerals

To hold your weight.

--

Conserve, hold together, your enthusiasm
Your ideas

Your hope, the length of your

Formulae
The breadth of your service to, but not your coddling kindness to, not your indulgences of, yourself.

It might look right anyway.

You believe that’s what matters.

--

I’m no happier than you are
Or than

Bill O’Reilly is

And
No one

Is angrier
Than I am

But my will is certain, that
Neither my placidity nor my actions will destroy my potential

Or me, or you

Or him, or her
Or us.

--

My flashing yellow pride does not just exist out of nowhere, you know.

It was not a gift, granted by the sky. It was fucking methodically fought for, hard

Like you could be fighting if you wanted to live.

--

Strength is founded, and
Yours could be

Not only upon these drops

Of cold, lazy, pulling, insidious, thick liquid
And too-bright stripes of warm, waking, pretty, shining light

But in a huge, intrinsic power, in a hulking knowledge
That the liquid and the light are the primordial, stackable blocks of life itself

Essentially unchangeable, yet traveling, malleable possibilities of discovery, the
Unequivocal construction of the universe.

Equations, fairness and balance, sense, can be forced into it

Or out of it
By us.

--

It is never only our falling down with gravity or

Our flying up with helium or with petroleum, with rocket fuel, it is

Never only our perceptions, our sensations.

--

The fact that we see, that
We can move, that

We can know the atomic arrangements of

The lights and
The liquids

The poisons
And the medicines

That we can take them
Or leave them

Means

That all of these elements
These parts, these pieces, their

--

Ability

Their potential, yours

To be recombined

--

To take
Or be taken by

Life

To move toward
Or away from

Pride
And strength

Is
The truth.

-- -- -- -- --

You could

Be
Anything.

--

Under that neon with that drink in your hand

Your chances, statistically, your choices, and then, again, your chances

Are

--

Real.





by Coke Brown Jr. -
as posted on Coke's Croaks -
www.cokescroaks.com