The So-Bad-It’s-Good World

John Herlihy

We live in a so-bad-it’s-good world without a care

Mediocrity with a new lifeline because of a dare

Unrelenting footage of film that virtually inspires

Humanity to wade thru muck as if from church spires

Oh sure, we have thrilling technologies all to impress

To lose ourselves through our fingers when under duress

We once shouted anger on a phone in a crowded room

Now we lose our heads from the mobile phone boom

Indeed, don’t we have the whole world there at our feet

Paris, London, Shang-hi on our doorstep, strangers to meet

I buy stock shares of Beyond Meat in my bedroom slippers

Millions can be made, swimming thru waters with flippers

I step over idle street people when having lunch at the Ritz

While entire Arab cities are ravaged as in a World War II blitz

Modern art considered amazing when it deserves no reprieve

With an air of false bravado, they say, and so charmingly naive

The world aggrandizes a host of celebrities famous for nothing

Swollen boobs, artfully painted faces, as if they were something

All wrapped up in themselves in ways that belie and beggar belief

Their greedy hearts just take what they want like a midnight thief

They spout platitudes of mind-numbing rap with their breath ablaze

The rhymes fall flat, while the sordid sentiments get lost in the haze

The one-night stand, someone’s got talent, to be hero for a day

All glorious aspirations in a corrupted world that has nothing to say

In a rare world of butterflies, people now pay attention to the moth

That flits hither thru life’s winter garden, as if mowing down a swath

My ex, Pricilla, is coming to the party, I am told, as I seethe within

No doubt she will arrive at my doorstep, wearing fur and a silly grin

Like a runaway train, this modern-day narrative will have a bad end

When the so-bad-it’s-good myth reveals itself without a single friend

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(c) John Herlihy 9 June 2019