Everyman America

Everyman America

Horatio came dragging a Star Spangled
towel
and a mismatched
flip flop
up the hill
from Hildebran
where he'd been a nose blown
pimp
hounded by bull horns
and revenue
agents
ubiquitous as
undertakers.

Seven months with a paintbrush
and a scrimped wad
of greasy cash
set him up as a boss man,
opening the floodgates
on his tawdry
ambitions.

Piles upon piles
of work orders
and receipts,
hand over fat brandished
fist,
he raked it in
and made Pharaoh
blanch with
his appetite for
gotten gold.

A barren marriage of equity
and acquisition,
properties,
mortgages,
great gilded vanities
consumed
in breathless wolf gasps
as if he would starve
should he not
possess
EVERYTHING
new under the sun.

Sam's Club
wagons filled to brim
with China plastic,
glass
and chrome—
Harley Davidsons lining
his drive
like fat guardsmen,
American Dreamed
cream leathered
diesels,
a Christmas tree for passing
fancies
and a Mastercard
for the rest.

Now he sits a worried king,
post adultery and
mid-divorce,
on his mount of
gain,
fending tax collectors
and alimony
with his top-tiered
accountant
for a mace,
gulping Zantac
and Prilosec
as if they were soul
salves—
his stomach can't take
another
summons from his
ex.

Perhaps he'll go back to
Hildebran,
raise a monolithic
family,
have his standard
cast in daguerreotype,
join the illustrious
ranks
of crafty sultans
who meet and
drink swill
in a brick shack
behind the First National.
Or perhaps he'll
retire
on the redneck
Riviera,
let the salt air
and sun poison
his remaining
vitality,
Buffet concerts
and Margaritaville
where the tasteless
go to die.

Or perhaps he'll just rot
upon his mound
of hoarded bank notes,
still too uneducated to comprehend
that the upper uppers
will never dance to his
tune.
He's a fiddler charming
rats,
a fake in snakeskin,
and he's Everyman America,
hand over his heart and
a flag for every
occasion.