What Would I Do (poem)

What Would I Do

I, what would I

You’ve come to such a jaded heart

Asking participation

Modern in your diction saying

Join the conversation

You talk of people in their shells

But watch them leave the trenches

Watch them start and dart the salvo

Find they’ve grown the legs of a mussel

Crackers extract them inch by inches

Footloose. Fancy. Free. Behold

the halves are empty

It’s the salty broth encroaching

Credit-homes encrusting shorelines

Like a margarita garnish

Like the bilge flushed out by cruiselines

What, alternative to stalking off

What, to fetching the elephant gun

Or rooting for Yellowstone to win

Or culting fresh sectarian fun

Searching 5000 spells for the very one

That unmelts the mind of a moron

All home-crafted witching trends to the same effect

Your thinker on the fritz

Your days stacking into missed…

Yopportunities, like dishes in the sink

insults getting borderline personal

narcissistic as a cloud of daffodils

anecdoting on stressful endings

Running out of the only constant

Grubbing for it under the sofa

What Would I Do

Refuge of Scoundrels

(2020, Stephanie Foster)