To Smell the Roses

‘Twas an ordinary day in an ordinary park When an old woman cam up to me She said “Lend me your ear and I’ll show you the future For only a very small fee” So I gave her a dollar and a tentative smile As a liquor flask peered through her gown “Come closer my dear for your future awaits” Then she laid out the cards all faced down I saw a man smelling roses on Wall Street Below a suit hanging above on a noose Graffiti on the wall next to the plummeting Dow Read: “This is what faith produced” I saw the man from Oz selling promises Behind a billboard with Photoshop skin His magazine telling us who we should be “Here are your cheekbones, your nose and your chin.” Card three was a woman with a cardboard sign Reading: “The Anti-Christ is here” While snorting a line of cocaine on a bible Reality is what she feared I saw an hour-glass flanked by a tombstone resting Atop a plasma television set Where a family consumed cheap fast-food While being trapped in the media’s net The last card was the strangest of all A long white beach with a message in the sand And footsteps leading into the sea Four words: “Which one are you?” The old lady gathered her cards And returned them to the top of the deck “I never bother to shuffle them,” she said Nor would I bother to check