4 Comments



  1. NO EXIT

    Endless malls that have no exits
    should be our closest look at hell:
    too many nice-to-haves too little
    time, no cash nor credit cards—
    no unemployment cheques nor
    bank debits, only foreclosure notes.

    But what’s so nasty about Hades
    with air-conditioned corridors?
    That knock-off Louis Vitton purse,
    or that Burberry bag slaved over
    by starving waifs in Bangladesh,
    you can do without—but in this
    heat, in this beastly humid heat,
    why does it matter if there is No Exit
    from an endless mall air-cooled
    by the taxes paid from mortgaged
    homes that will soon become houses
    grabbed by money-lenders and realtors?

    Here, where lilac leaves hang limply
    at the end of a dead dry day, I dream
    of an endless mall that has no exit.
    Like that homeless tramp snoozing
    his hunger (or hangover) away near
    MacDonald’s, I hope I never wake up.

    —Albert B. Casuga
    08-05-11


  2. Albert, it’s interesting to compare your response to Dave’s morning musing to Luisa’s — two plants grown from a single seed.


    1. Thanks for the read, Larry. Hope mine is not the wilting plant. Irony seems to be stock of my trade these days. (I owe the title from an old Sartre novel, made into a dreary film I saw when I was at university—a long, long ago.)

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