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
Copyright © Herb Alyètte | Year Posted 2010
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