The Layer Cake
The Layer Cake
We are a skewed birthday cake,
generations of lopsided layers
baked badly by ancestors
of fervent but defective intent,
teetering atop the stale and dried out.
The layers descend into the past,
inedible and mostly forgotten
while we the temporary top deny
bad ingredients and tiltings
and frosting with crème cruel.
We concoct the next tier
with hope and even love
but use a cookbook specifying
flour of custom and bias
and spices of mistakes.
It is a mighty wonder
that the cake still stacks
and those just set in place
don’t slide off to extinction
on the icing of our failings.
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