It just so happened
I was stumbling, bumbling, fumbling around
a bit tipsy and lit from the whisky that day.
I walked, talked, and came across some chalk,
Which in big, bright, bulbous letters yelled,
“Lecture this way!”
I must’ve been drunk
to ever have thunk
I could understand a word, any word
that would be said.
I went along,
carrying on,
till I arrived
And sat my bottom down.
I shit you not,
I would not lie,
this is what I heard:
“Society has ceased to be,
because of the structuring structures
that structurally structure
structured structuration.
If only the air wasn’t solid!
For if material materials
materialize materially
immaterial of the immaterialness
of immaterially immaterializing immaterials,
then who's to say that banal banalities
don’t bombastically bombard banal realities.
The virtual might as well be linen!
This is why we must choose to identify identities
to signify symbolically significant identifiable differences
in identified identifiability.
Up is certainly sidewise!
And thus,
the mouth has rigorous rhetoric rhetorically,
which remains unrigorous
regardless of being rhetorical.
Left is then quite necessarily diagonal, and so on…
We are left then with the option of revolutions
which revolutionize revolutionaries revolutionarily,
whether or not such nihilism
doesn’t nihilistically annihilate the nihilist.
Death may be a duck’s quack, ladies and gentlemen!
Therefore, let lively livelihoods live livelier
than deadlihoods that are deadly
in their deadliness.
Life is a top hat!”
Everyone then stood and clapped,
some even cheered.
I haven’t the faintest idea why.
I understood
there was nothing to understand
or even possibly understandable,
which might have been a misunderstanding.
All I know
in terms of knowing knowns
rather than unknowns,
especially when they are unknowable,
is I was the only one sitting that day.
Andrew Smolski is a writer and poet. His work has appeared in Jacobin, CounterPunch and SpeakOut.