Fortune Cookies
We’ve got people to see
and things to do
and a big ol’ checklist
to work through,
a clipboard with paper
made from older paper
and elephant dung,
a couple bottles of water
and all the time
in the universe.
It’s a social experiment,
whatever that means,
like when people stop in the street
and trip over their feet
or lay low for weeks
with some disease,
and I don’t do fancy dress
because I’m scared of looking
like a fool.
There’s a man
with a burnt hand,
and maybe it’s a metaphor
for fortune cookies;
I’d bake my own batch
but I’m out of eggs
and flour.
You will meet
a tall, dark stranger;
you will discover
rare new elements,
tame elephants
or become irrelevant,
irreverent.
Time is a pool
we drink by the bucketful,
and school
is a breeding ground
for conformity –
you won’t learn that
in classrooms or Chinese restaurants,
but you’ll have all you can eat
and then some.
Might as well break
your chopsticks
and go back to learning
the piano.
