Ode To A World We May Not Have Lost After All

Nietzsche tweets

And Zarathustra speaks

Thusly: The Word is dead

Long live the word!

I don’t think I’ve ever

Heard anything more

Absurd in my life

And yet that’s exactly

The way it goes lately

Why just the other day 

A young man

On the street corner

Explained he was in the grip

Of an intense though perfectly rational fear

About how ever since 1997 the storyline

At Marvel Comics has been

Spinning out of control

With parallel universes

Coming and going

With abandon

So fast it’s impossible

To keep track

And only now I realize

That’s exactly the way

I’m starting to feel

Though not about Marvel

But about the myriad

Strange creatures and myths

Populating my own storyline

The center holds onto

What exactly?

The extremities I suppose

And what do the extremities

Hold onto when they're not

Sleeping or otherwise indisposed?

Here we've all been living in the grip

Of the poet's most powerful illusion

That one day things were otherwise

That order once prevailed

But it's always been the same

As far as I can tell

It's always been a mug's game

For king and pauper alike

We just make the rules up

As merrily or not verily
We keep rolling along