So yeah, along those lines, I was thinking, yeah,
this is almost a poem for Mitt Romney or something.
You know, did we miss the debate tonight?
We did.
We missed the Republican debate.
I think it happened already.
Yeah, a favela is a Portuguese word
for a slum, a Brazilian slum.
This is called "Achievement".
I was just thinking how much of the culture
is built around this idea, and how little
we understand about it.
"Achievement"
"As much as we wish, we can help ourselves to coming home,
and to a pepper-heavy Bloody Mary and a back pillow
and long flyways flown by dry-clean shirts and dresses,
pressed silk synthetics run up by favela girls, born again
in a factory cave, strewn with secondhand sewing machines.
So that afterwards, maybe, as we arrive again as always,
inside the smell of filtered sky and clouds,
crisscrossed by Jet fuel, while the dripping green light
resonates off the edges of a red gum's leaves.
Perhaps we could even call it the family
tree, as we float there above it,
looking down through the branches at the test prep kids,
applying their sisterly mascara in the Saab convertible.
Committed as we are to achievement, no doubt,
and having come home once more for a little while longer,
we will be able to go on helping ourselves then,
to the Frenched rack of lamb, or an uninhibited pit bull,
encrypted laptop, or pen knife.
An accidental and systemic form of self inventing, life
and the container ships will go on mutating
across sea lanes, carrying cartons of bath
towels, hardwoods, and pixels.
And at some point, each of us will
know exactly how it was that we came
to be among people who are convinced, absolutely
convinced, that they know the score."