Ah, Ersatz

Evaporating in a sea
of information again. Hardly
an informed decision. Who’s
at the helm of this dingy-dingy
anyway? Fee-fi-fo-fum, I smell
the blood of an English whoa
man. Whoa; a cascade of twisting
DNA plummets as a vertical
column within negative space.
Err. Dare I say: error. Ear:
Do you hear? We all fall down.
Hello. Tricked by a spurious
fairy tale character—Jack!—
climbing strands double-helixed
together into a mock mast:
bring me the harp that plays
itself. Spellbinding, this instrument
of destruction, the lyre of Greek
sirens. But Kafka suggests
it’s silence, not song, that enchants,
an inheritance already stealth-
woven into female sinews. Estranged
from my future self, I don’t save
money—because why give it
to a stranger years from now?
Experts call it: Present Tense
Bias. Before the golden goose,
ie private property, was patronage
matrilineal, marriage non-existent?
I remember my father wondering
if all sons disappoint their parents
as he looked at his portrait. I am
a dislocated voyageur juggling oars
in an interstitial ocean. I stand
in between neatly bagged trash
on 12th street and snap away
with my cellphone: all the bottles,
washed thrice, tied up once
in a bow. Bright cobalt and
acid-green blur through glassine
wrap. Jack, by the way, usually returns
to his mother, never seeks
a princess. Ring o’ Rosie. Ashes, ashes.