Had a good morning and a terrible afternoon. As I fixed drinks and cracked open oranges, the cover art for Supertramp's Breakfast in America floated into mind. In a dream I dwelt on the perfect kitsch of that album, while serving the most important meal of the day in the country's third largest city. When I got home my mood soured considerably. I was swamped with loathing for the whole business: food, literature, metropolis, racist cops killing with impunity. The result of that bitterness is the following poem. I felt much better after finishing, as is blissfully typical. Still, the poem can be read as what I imagine could be going through the waitresses' head on the cover of that oldie Supertramp record.
Breakfast in America I
My teeth should be paste -
I milk them like big pharma.
Christ in hell what a Breakfast.
I kept engineering the slow
painful death of those around me,
forcing each sharp object I touched
deep into every pair of eyes I met.
Wanton thirst for misery so early;
Chicago was always known for pulp.
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