(Records Are Like Life)

The ageing shuffle function's
approximation of taste
gave us six downers in a row

then bounced back
with the cracker-barrel rictus
of happy hardcore.

Sadly never so "wasted"
that it ever made sense to me
just as in 1978 you could slip "new wave"

records on when everyone was drunk--
Homicide by 999, say, or The Stranglers (Peaches),
but... The shuffle function was

letting anyone else do it
which was never.
The shuffle function

of the guidance counsellor's
high-freckled "rap"
about the "sidjuation"

tight Jimmy Olsen curls
into an Archie crosshatch fade
a bifocal lowering sans specs

comes to rest
at the bridge of your nose, says
down to business--

and so impressive
the audio-visual gestetner
ink-smelling gestalt

(until perhaps a half-dozen
years ago I would still roam the halls
in sleep, stealing books

in an admixture of revulsion
that when I awoke)
that lacking even a robot's

will to charm the odds
or even an 8-track or a Lazy Susan
I consumed the script.