Regrets, somewhere in heaven
Sometimes I scramble Whitman
and Thoreau in my mind,
maybe there’s something about
that Walt and Walden,
like they’re out of order
catalog cards ripped and shuffled
laid out on felt tables
with numbers and little places for cards
and the dealer rolls the dice like quantum magic.
I wonder if that old Heisenberg
joke about getting caught speeding
is really canonical, or more apocryphal,
a little revealing,
when Chemists tell jokes
no one laughs unless medicine is being mixed,
and pharmacists
seldom draw the crowds
that snake oil salesmen get
commandeering sidewalks
like protestors lining up receipts
impromptu signs
like mushrooms after a rainstorm,
their practiced cant
shouting out the benefits
of their questionable wares
with definitive promises
that no hair will be lost,
no sex drive will be hindered,
that absolutely,
without a doubt,
not a single refund will be given;
and I think of Congress,
shuffling back and forth
in the dead of night
in their power ties and pants suits
and their pretenses
that they possess no power,
no purse, that the ghosts
that haunt those marble hallways
don’t curse, don’t swear, don’t find
empty spittoons to fill,
don’t take golf vacations in Maryland or
give up on beltway traffic and
I wonder if Abraham Lincoln really
regrets right now, somewhere in heaven,
keeping this union together,
and whether all those old patriots who fought tea taxes
sewing makeshift flags with inflammatory slogans,
I just wonder
if they’re not a little disappointed
with how we’ve turned out.
