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Overloading the Machine

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the after-hours party in the church
broken up by ministers stern with handcuffs
friends and seventh-grade locker partners
lined up against the wall

spaghetti mob mentality
all want to give BIG BROTHER
a BIG BRUISING black eye
but who will swing

both ways when the time comes
to unsnap that snap, and stray
from the spread sheet cell.

Turning from the blaze to the counterpanel // I saw how we are all great in our shortcomings, yea // greater because of them. There are letters in the alphabet // we don't know yet, but when we've remembered them // we'll know the luster of unsupported things. // Our negativity will have caught up with us // and we'll be better for it. Just // keep turning on lights, wasting electricity, // carousing with aardvarks, smashing the stemware. // These apartments we live in are nicer // than where we lived before, near the beginning. //

-- John Ashbery, "When I Saw the Invidious Flare"