Roy Herndon Smith
…we eat reality sandwiches.—Allen Ginsburg
Nothing’s naked in
reality sandwiches,
except irony,
which is always dressed
up. Actuality rots,
I should say “ages,”
like the purest meat,
like a rose, named “sweet,” that wilts,
and discarded as
“garbage,” it stinks
like a child named “illegal”
left to wither in
a “summer camp” like
Alcatraz, like babes left to
drown in a river,
while everyone else
goes looking for causes or
anything bigger.
The mayonnaise on
the lettuce is the first thing
to go bad, it makes
everything taste good,
we don’t notice we’re dying.
The symbolic kills
the life it, naming,
makes up. Reality is
the whole Dagwood.
dust 