Poetry Archives

Woo-hoo Homer Simpson is thinking
designer polish makes shoes softly glow
especially a pair of Assassin cross trainers.
The day just feels better owning lots of things
and knowing soon you’ll own even more
so what if the things are mostly useless and stupid
and it’s a life’s work paying them off
the reason for work is things
like things to eat, the children’s things—
paying bills is what growing up brings.
Debt is a key that unlocks the world of things
things that you must master but will be your master.
Industry might bathe the world in synthetic oestrogen
but free-range background radiation only serves to make
us stronger.  Who’s complaining?  TV fiction is where we
can find solace and fulfilment, the actors show us how to live
brilliantly, without hope.  Cartoon characters can teach
us even more.  The longer the end takes the better.
How should we live?  Homer finds out and shows us.
First we laugh at growing up: look at young
Bart Simpson writing love letters to his teacher,
Mrs Krabapple who, opening them reads the thinly
veiled innuendo and relishes the scrawled
whisperings—Ay carumba, a butt that won’t quit…
She falls for the smutty words written
in Bart’s young hand she imagines spoken
sexily, a foreign accent, a Mexican
she’s so sucked in by the photo of the football star
any fool would recognise, she wants a love
forever, a love that she deserves.
Whatever.  After too many ads it’s the bowling episode
perhaps the most beautiful of all Simpsons episodes
when Homer has to give up following a lifelong dream
his dream part-time job working in a bowling alley
cleaning and clearing up after the bowlers have finished
their games, there could be no work happier
yet to make ends meet Homer must
return to full-time employment
at the nuclear power plant Sector 7G
and as he walks in the door
the management lackeys chant
“Don’t forget you’re here forever”.
Homer hates it that the dream
left him and he had to leave the dream
and in his flashbacks gets mad every time
Marge says she’s having a baby but their children
are the holy family, a glowing icon pinned to a wall
in every house with a television.  Moments of truth
and beauty when the reactor melts down, chaos
storms into the tv hypnosis. Only dumb luck and
one of Homer’s epiphanies save us—the cartoon
craziness is Homer expressing love
for his family.  O little baby Maggie her photos
brighten Sector 7G’s grey walls, sweet enough
to make nuclear power safe for all.
The little baby’s what the story’s really about
in the end what a lot of stories are about
and that’s how the Simpson family’s
love redeems America’s savage affluence.
One day Homer floods Springfield
to make the streets canals, his town
a work of art like Venice the city of art.