Ingots Of Arrogance Poem by Edward Mayes

You've hit most of the traffic cones
You'd only swiped the day
Before. And the hand pump's

In the garage where the double
Amputee won't find it, a reminder
Of death and flat tires. Would

You be willing to shatter
The Artifacts of the Other Life
When you know that this life

Is lived out? Those who deign
Can't easily unvouchsafe,
That splinter in your thumb

From scratching your eyes,
The double life you've led at
The funny farm, from the culture

Of the tractor pull to crop
Rotation and sloughed-off
Souls. You're a saturnalia of

One, bursting your tubes, tubering
And non-amative in all the untilled
Fields, the evaporation of any

Condensation inside of you you
Have left. When you took the fun
Out of fundamental, you should

Have also taken the mental, and
The calloused thoughts, caterwauling
Spats, calculated squabbles. The har

Har har hardly matters, scattering
Chance, stinkhorn in the pleasance,
What will be won't be. You give

Yourself the hives, the heebies you
Picked up from the jeebies. First
Judgment: wrong. Last judgment:

Wrong again. You're dogged and
Dangerous, trolling so sadly through
Sloughs, backwaters of whatever,

Weaving nothing you know the name
Of, a cough, a minor calamity of
Living, a doubt, a barren fear of death.