Gossip
Chris Serio
09/27/02

Can I tell you a secret?

Words formed carelessly by the flapping jaws
Of teenage girls, captured in slow motion close-ups,
The death of us all,
Or at least the death of the boy they prophesize about,
His eyes sullied into their sockets and shoulders shrugged high
To form anything but a glamorous silhouette.

No one holds any particular distaste for him,
It’s just so bloody easy
So why not wreck him?

Self improvement is important after all,
And her ego suffers from a lack of bolstering,
Regardless of how many crass lips
Have faked I love yous.

It’s fun to victimize
And graffiti the soul with verbal spray paint,

Each new one hundred and twenty three pound shrug shouldered
Tight eyed close lipped awkward walking
Example of God’s image,
A canvas waiting to be a mural and colour coded to the 10th degree,
The social masterpiece of the modern day,
Of modern man.
More ostentatious than the backwards diary of Da Vinci and his inquest,
More perfect than the Sistine chapel painted with inverted dry brushes
And restored by forty thousand ambitious art students,
Nowhere near achieving the applause earned by the easily appreciated excellence
Of a perfect rumor,
Tacked into vertebrae with a safety pin
And scribbled on a yellow post-it note.

Giggles lining hallways,
Hollywood “lone ranger” scenes romanticized for today
And edited accordingly so as to not be overly offensive.

Generation children connected umbilical
To a television set,
Motionless as they’re cut in half.

Whatever faded whispers echo his frantic iris
Have simmered to a rolling boil
As grammatically incorrect phrases dance along telephone chords.

Did you like, see his face?

.
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Generation Children…
Look at what we are.


Did you hear the news?