Two Halves Of A Philosophy
Aside from the nonstop monkeying of the maybe six-year-old brat
who keeps dashing from car to car poking and fingering and grabbing
it's the usual show, too many of those wicked flashes that
are less like warning lights than winks of the Devil's eye then go BLAM
but pyrotechnics nonetheless. A pink explosion fades to a purple shower
and while the crowd honks and cheers and whistles
I yell as loudly as I can without hurting any ears
"SO WHAT?" A puff of purple and green
transforms into a swarm of white divers. Big crowd noise
and another "SO WHAT?" A gold splash that lets
one big gold spark plummet to earth and just as it hits ends with a BANG gets cheers and a rousing "SO WHAT?" and then he starts
doing it, too: to the huge blooming of smoky trails that
turn orange and pink at the end, "SO WHAT?"
we chorus, and to the Christmasy red and green poppers that
let loose a school of downswimming fishes, in unison "SO WHAT?"
and to the one that seems to set the patriots ablaze with nothing
but red, white, and BANG, all together now "SO WHAT?" until
the little parentally oblivious nuisance that has been so busy trying to do
all he can to ruin it for everyone else finally stops and looks
up at us on the hood of our truck and asks "Why
do you keep saying 'So what'?" and wishing I could
be telling it to all the naysayers, timeservers, goodygoodenoughers,
and officialdumbs "illegitimi non carborundum" was meant to warn about
I let him have it, yelling back, over the bombs bursting in mid-air,
"WHY NOT?"
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