{"id":9837,"date":"2020-10-24T14:44:47","date_gmt":"2020-10-24T13:44:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cassandravoices.com\/?p=9837"},"modified":"2020-10-24T14:44:47","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T13:44:47","slug":"poetry-kevin-higgins-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/2020\/10\/24\/poetry-kevin-higgins-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Poetry &#8211; Kevin Higgins"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>The Joke<br \/>\n<\/strong><em>after Walter Benjamin <\/em><\/p>\n<p>A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit<br \/>\ndonated by a casino owner who knows people<br \/>\nwith a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top<br \/>\nbecause it was the only available metaphor for hair<br \/>\nwas running for re-election as CEO of South Canadia<br \/>\nagainst an old coat with holes in it.<\/p>\n<p>The barrel of waste was trailing<br \/>\nhistrionically among professors emeritus<br \/>\nwhose brains were in the process of being dismantled<br \/>\nby lethargy and time, and among those<br \/>\nwho, as and when the stock market permits,<br \/>\ntake a year off to celebrate their dividends<br \/>\nby doing good works among brown people in far countries<br \/>\nnot lucky enough to have stock markets or dehumidifiers.<br \/>\nSuch people agreed with each other that the barrel of waste<br \/>\nmade the raging boil on the nation\u2019s privates<br \/>\nway too obvious, and hoped by throwing<br \/>\nthe old coat over it they could again<br \/>\nforget it was there.<\/p>\n<p>The barrel of waste said the old coat couldn\u2019t deliver<br \/>\non the promises he wasn\u2019t making,<br \/>\nand maintained good leads among morticians,<br \/>\npimps, and police informants<br \/>\nand had the total bastard vote<br \/>\nninety nine percent sewn up &#8211;<br \/>\nin essence everyone except the late John DeLorean<br \/>\nand perhaps Alan Dershowitz.<\/p>\n<p>There was a minority faction who wanted the boil<br \/>\non the nation\u2019s privates given free antibiotics, lanced<br \/>\nwith a big needle imported from Sweden<br \/>\nand then cauterised. But most people found<br \/>\nthough they were in favour, in their hearts,<br \/>\nof lancing the boil,<br \/>\nin practice they were for<br \/>\nallowing the boil to grow redder, angrier, more toxic<br \/>\nunder the old coat with holes in it.<\/p>\n<p>So the minority extremist faction<br \/>\nwho wanted the thing treated<br \/>\nwere sentenced to the echo chamber<br \/>\nto argue about whether the old coat<br \/>\nwith holes in it really<br \/>\nwas the lesser evil.<\/p>\n<p>The midwife of history,<br \/>\ngrown bored with the year twenty twenty,<br \/>\nhad decided to play one of her jokes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The Joke after Walter Benjamin A barrel of industrial waste poured into a suit donated by a casino owner who knows people with a tangerine tea towel tossed strategically on top because it was the only available metaphor for hair was running for re-election as CEO of South Canadia against an old coat with holes [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":161,"featured_media":9836,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[5218,5224,5228],"class_list":["post-9837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry","tag-kevin-higgins-poet","tag-kevin-higgins-satirical-poetry","tag-kevin-higgins-us-presidential-election"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/161"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/casswp.eutonom.eu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}