“Chaos Chant”

c. 2026 Rod Ice

All rights reserved

(1-26)

 

Chaos, coast-to-coast

A state of emergency, undeclared

SWAT teams and their partners, under the stairs

Certain uncertainties, everywhere

I might have known

But a failed newspaper delivery left me alone

And someone cut the cord of my telephone

A device I should have shucked

In favor of artificial intelligence, and a bit of beginner’s luck

Tribalism corrals the breed

When a swarming population guards its seed

Carefully and critically caused to bleed

On the streets of a metropolis, where temperatures freeze

I watched the crash through my TV set

Saw the stock market tumble with fear and regret

While my representative at the big house said, “Do not forget!”

Make my choice

Hear my voice

My ride through town in the back of a Rolls Royce

Sitting on a plush and pillowy perch

Looking through stained glass, tinted with diesel and dirt

It made me cringe as if it were I who had been hurt

A nightstick to the teeth

A bend-over-backwards stance, proscribed for relief

I thought it best to evade the thief

As he stole a wristwatch from a bum who boldly kept track of time

An act indefensible, according to the headlines

I had to wonder about feeling sublime

As if my nerves had been numbed

My veins, medically plumbed

By a recommended dose of ignorance, won

At a poker game on the concrete

Half a block up the high street

Now I did not come this way for adventure or recognition

That was not my intended supposition

Yet with a single step behind the yellow tape

And trails of flavored, electronic vapes

I inherited my fate

To be remembered in retrospect, on this auspicious date

Clutching at my chest like a vintner squeezing grapes

Is the juice worth this twitch of painful remorse?

I heard the sound of breaking glass, somewhere on the concourse

A result of new traditions, being enforced

A pluck of the low-hanging fruit

A goose-stepping raider in the guise of a zoot suit

Whistles and wailers, cheerfully toot

On gold horns

An entreaty to a godlike goblin, forlorn

I was shivering in the onset of a great winter storm

Bad planning and such

To be outside and hobbling, with a single, steel crutch

It made me turn in circles, instead of staying in touch

Along the perimeter, like a mystical cheater

Around the polished post of a parking meter

Praying to the apostles, John, Matthew, and Peter

Which had all run out of minutes to express

At a point that I could not guess

A sad sign of neglected outrageousness

It left me standing in the middle of traffic

After the evacuation of magicians and their tricks

And all manner of mortality, scattered on the bricks

I needed a remedy, impulsively quick

But the pharmacy had closed

A constable thumbed his nose

And clicked his heels in subservient repose

That was the last of my dream

When I awoke, it was to a different scene

Every trace of the happening had been scrubbed lawfully clean

And I had only doubt as a friend

A fool, intellectually on the mend

This  cautionary tale was at an end