Paraphernalia

What is not ephemera?
Cherished mementos,
whispers in camera,
are no more momentous

than an old man’s whims
– no value to others
once their luster dims.
So let connoisseurs

mull piece by piece
through what we remainder
in bulk or recycle in peace.
The account of their labour

will tally the same
as our own best
trove of kitsch. No blame
if blest be curst, curst blest.

Judgments falter,
passions flare and pall,
fashions alter.
What holds us in thrall

is the mindless cachet
we confer to what’re
just chimera anyway:
votives for prayer,

idols cast into pixels,
facsimiles which flicker
then slip like this poem
into oblivion.

*

The sense of an ending is here conveyed by the abrupt dissolution of the slant rhyme stanzas, a shattering of expectation which the poem exemplifies, oblivion being the outcome of entropy, the degradation of order towards a state of unmarked uniformity. Form follows content; here, the end of rhyme marks the end of life.

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