Mad Lib Elegy

There are starving children left on your plate.

There are injuries without brains.

Migrant workers spend 23 hours a day

removing tiny seeds from mixtures

they cannot afford to smoke

and cannot afford not to smoke.

Entire nations are ignorant of the basic facts

of hair removal and therefore resent

our efforts to depilate unsightly problem areas.

Imprisonment increases life expectancy.

Finish your children. Adopt an injury.

‘I'm going to my car. When I get back,

I'm shooting everybody.'

[line omitted in memory of_______]

70% of pound animals will be euthanized.

94% of pound animals would be euthanized

if given the choice. The mind may be trained

to relieve itself on paper. A pill

for your safety, a pill for her pleasure.

Neighbors are bothered by loud laughter

but not by loud weeping.

Massively multiplayer zombie-infection web-games

are all the rage among lifers.

The world is a rare case of selective asymmetry.

The capitol is redolent of burnt monk.

‘I'm going to my car. When I get back

I'm shooting everybody.'

[line omitted in memory of _______]

There are two kinds of people in the world:

those that condemn parking lots as monstrosities,

‘the ruines of a broken World,' and those

that respond to their majesty emotionally.

70% of the planet is covered in parking lots.

94% of a man's body is parking lot.

Particles of parking lot have been discovered

in the permanent shadows of the moon.

There is terror in sublimity.

If Americans experience sublimity

the terrorists have won.

‘I'm going to my car. When I get back

I'm shooting everybody.'

[line omitted in memory of _______]

Copyright Credit: Ben Lerner, "Mad Lib Elegy" from Fascicle website. Copyright © 2010 by Ben Lerner. Reprinted by permission of the author.

Source: Fascicle website (2010)