candy flaccid garbage pomp

Photo by Suzy Hazelwood on Pexels

it’s the sound of small talk 
between two plastic people — 
the whole interaction 
makes my entire body wince… 
it’s the champagne laughs that accompany 
the cell phone photo library show-and-tell-a-thon 
 — it’s like rainbow sprinkles in my overhearer’s ear 
stop it… 
stop it
please, just stop it 
you’re an idiot, okay? 
that’s why I don’t want to read your bullshit, 
your candy flaccid garbage pomp! 
the drivel gives me gas… 
your giggles make me want to fart 
yah, this person is just too damn pleasant and kind, 
too squeaky-on-the-surface clean to be real, man… 
mhm, and this person believes in a Neptune-magic 
fairy-God who erected the Earth in thirteen hours 
and turned the damn thing in late 
as his high school science project, 
and the bastard only got a C- 
yeah, yeah 
you’re awesome 
so, tell me how to run my life 
preach about this thing, this work-life-balance 
 — it’s Listerine on bleeding gums, 
cool mint and carry on…
oh, I know you cry at night just like the rest of us 
and you iron your silk ties with Netflix on in the background 
and your Goodreads profile 
always has the coolest five-star shit 
yeah, yeah 
you’re awesome 
go ahead, tell me all about it

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Garbage Notes:

I get so annoyed with these go-getters who act positive all the time, like nothing is wrong with the world and life is just firing on all cylinders for them. I don’t know about you, but I always feel like I’m trudging through quick sand. And it’s like all these people around me in public are acting like everything is amazing.

I remember working at an old job where I was face-to-face with the general public—overhearing the basic conversations between regular people—it always made me so sick. The trivial shit they’re concerned about. The humdrum garbage, where they all seemed to talk like they were the absolute center of the universe and no one could lay a finger on them.

I couldn’t get through a single day without someone bragging about their stellar career or their genius kids or how they miraculously lost five pounds or how the most brilliant surgeon on the planet just removed their giant mole or how their dog just got accepted to Harvard.

The title just sort of came to me. Candy because it’s always the most sickly sweet topics, lacking any real substance. Flaccid because they’re always bragging about the most lame and weakest shit. And garbage, because well, we all know what garbage means. And pomp because they’d always make a splendid public display of it.

So that’s where this one came from. I swear I’m not always this negative. But people in public really get to me sometimes. It’s that public face. The inability to express the ugly or the not-so-perfect. It creates a distance between us all and alienates those who are having a hard time, making us feel like no one else on earth could possibly understand.

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Franco Amati 2023