I spent some time in America’s hipsterest (is that a word?) town last week interviewing a woman who’d left a life where wealthy men used her for their own pleasure. It was the kind of interview that doesn’t sit easy on the mind, the kind that sheds new light on the word depraved, and to be clear, when I say depraved, I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about them. The fungible, replaceable white dudes (aka, bros) who took advantage of her situation.
On a break, while eating dinner alone, skimming some Bukowski, and staring out a second-story window at a sea of strutting fedoras, the following poem just sort of happened. It was as if my pen was moving across my journal coming up with automatic words, and when it was finished, I read it through and thought, Yeah… that’s us.
I understand this might not be the kind of poem that’s easy to take, particularly if you’re a man, but take it anyway. After all, I’m a man—a white dude, in fact—and I wrote it. So yes, this is as much of an indictment of myself as it is anyone.
Fungible White Dudes
in same flannel patterns
same vests, shade of red
give-a-damn strut
wondering what?
nothing in blank
bald brains
begging for next
pair of legs, lips,
deals, dead dollars,
grabbing what
words want,
which is slight.
“Buy youth,
sell age,”
the law of
supply and demand,
so saints,
sages, philosophers,
mothers sit in the
pine needles wondering:
how large a throat
must be to swallow
so much world and
still be fungible,
flannel,
same shade of
false.
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For those of you who caught the typo in the email, thanks. I do know how to use be verbs. Promise.
This is great. Raw and real. Thanks for sharing