Bespectacled crusaders against the weatherbeaten
against the inevitability of decline
the insistence of wear and tear, of demise, of oxidation
eschewing orange-aproned yeasayers
trafficking the intricacies of replacing a washer
in a drippy kitchen faucet, running numbers
on fixer-uppers with free tickets to after-hour haunts
where sequined curtains part for whisperers
filling in the blanks. You will be applauded
by the graffiti-stained, heralded by street corner profiteers
and by all members of the extended familia
your boats moored in the marina at La Mancha.
There is nothing left of the landscape
nothing left of the ideas that ballooned
above the congregation - the congregation that now
at a drop in the Dow scalps tickets
to sit at the feat of the next double header.
If you can drive a nail, fine; if not, no problema.
Browse YouTube, punch in your query
and be buried in multi-lingual, detailed instructions
for rehabbing your backyard gazebo for those -
and isn't that just about every one of us? -
who in a weakened weekend moment would pounce
on the trifolded specs of the Gates of Hell
where, when summer begins to unravel -
as it most surely will - we will assemble, reassured
that in these dark days of terror-ists and global warnings
every do-it-yourselfer will score a bogey
in view of no less than 10 neighbors
who moonlight as anonymous purveyors of blogspeak.
