The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

Mack Hall, HSG
mhall46184@aol.com

The Aging Iconoclast on the Late Show

His long career enriched with icons smashed,

An existential poet, heavy with age,
Was preening in the green room of fashion
Awaiting his at-last adoration
Upon the glowing boxes of the world.

“I smashed the vain icon of privilege,”

He trilled to all, while a thin girl in tats
Powdered his nose. “With just my vengeful pen,
“I broke the icon of capitalism!”
A singer-stripper sipped her soda, and sighed.

“I then exposed the icon of the news,

And held it up for the people to scorn.”
He did not see the makeup artist roll
Her eyes.  A desperate young comedienne
Pretended to be busy with her skull.

“And I alone broke all the icons of

Hypocrisy in Wall Street.  Death to debt!
My icon-smashing verses smashed the world
Of formulaic poetry forever!”
A sex-change surgeon sharpened his pink tongue.

“In my day we smashed icons in the war
Against shopworn bourgeois complacency!”
The arbiters of this week’s taste and thought
Waited, in sequence obedient, their turns.
And then a voice, uncertain, asked at last:

“What’s an icon?”