"22nd Century Waltz" by Sean Arnold

Sean Arnold stepped up to the mic at the •Chance Operations• reading on May 10 at Duff's.

The next •Chance Operations• readings will be Monday, June 14, and Monday, July 26, at Duff's in the Central West End. Doors will open at 7:30 p.m. on both evenings.

Featured readers for June 14 are Gena Brady Allen, Eileen G'Sell, and Stefene Russell. Interested readers may sign-up for the open mic first come-first serve at the reading.

22nd Century Waltz

"this isn't bitterness, it's merely a tremor of the earth"
--frank o'hara

all these pretty women here without me in a vacated groucho-marxist room:
we pick up situations and put them down right quick
making bad decisions to the sound of white vodka crackling and
mute television movie sets big screened onto a panorama of skyline windows.
settle down, settle down, son
the river is pretty deep and there's a lot of sticks for sticking,
the cash trees are on fire and the ashes catch on children's parasols dancing a 22nd century waltz in what looks like rain.
we sow the stuff in the soft ground and reap nothing
catching the invisible sprouts in our teeth and swallowing easily.
the bartender watches this phenomenon through the window of his workaday,
he doesn't bat an eyebrow,
he's used to seeing a world drunk off its ass
kids picking the cigarette flowers and adults making bonfires out of greenslips.
he's almost used to the invented verbiage of the vulture-faced american surreal
almost
but all those frowns,
inverted and otherwise
are an intense archaic against a bad lit movie plot
the shades all drawn down.

-- Sean Arnold