portmanterrorism

garrison keillor read this poem to us today during npr's "the writer's almanac." we really liked it. it's very clever.
it turns out that the poet Nick Lantz lives in madison too! check his stuff out at his blog.

Portmanterrorism

Would it make a difference to say we suffered

from affluenza in those days? Could we blame

Reaganomics, advertainment, the turducken

and televangelism we swallowed by the sporkful,

all that brunch and jazzercise, frappuccinos

we guzzled on the Seatac tarmac, sexcellent

celebutantes we ogled with camcorders while

our imagineers simulcast the administrivia

of our alarmaggedon across the glocal village?

Would it help to say that we misunderestimated

the effects of Frankenfood and mutagenic smog,

to speculate that amid all our infornography

and anticipointment, some crisitunity slumbered

unnoticed in a roadside motel? Does it count

for nothing that we are now willing to admit

that the animatronic monster slouching across

the soundstage of our tragicomic docusoap

was only a distraction? Because now, for all our

gerrymandering, the anecdata won’t line up for us.

When we saw those contrails cleaving the sky

above us, we couldn’t make out their beginning

or their end. What, in those long hours of ash,

could our appletinis tell us of good or of evil?