The news of this Argentine Ferret Poodle has screwed me up. So I wrote a poem about it.
EVERYTHING I HAVE EVER KNOWN IS A LIE
I bought a toy
poodle then learned it
was a ferret on
steroids. What I thought
was a pizza was
only bread covered
with ketchup. I ate it anyway.
I drive this car to work.
Come to find out
it’s not a car but
a motorized skateboard
encased in plexiglass,
which is not really plexiglass
but translucent candy shells,
which aren’t really edible
but poisonous, which isn’t
really all that dangerous,
or is it? At work my boss
is really somebody else’s boss
pretending to be my boss.
Turns out I may in fact
be my own boss.
My cubicle?
A cardboard box covered in fabric.
When I’m stressed, I listen
to the radio, though I just heard
my stress is really joy
turned inside out
and this song is nothing but
the hissing of snakes.
Snakes really are snakes.
I am feeling sad about all this
but how do I know it’s sadness?
It could be happiness smeared with mud.
It could be happiness smeared with blood
colored brown to resemble mud.
The poem I’ve been typing?
Not really a poem. Prose.
This realization that this poem is prose
is more like an ah-ha gotcha! moment
than anything else. And anything else?
Anything else could really be
everything else, which is to say
it could just as easily be
nothing at all.
To be, I am finding out, is
not to be.
To be is to be duped
and isn't to be duped
the goal we seek?
Don't we close our eyes
to complain about the dark?
