The Grovelers
*(from an idea by Manuel “Spain” Rodriguez)*
They’re never factory workers, temps,
part-time-employed, or underclass. Those people
hate and mock them, more than they ever have
the rich, and stab them in alleys.
A student at an elite school
returns from class, where he has aced a test,
and lies on his bed, where many top-ranked
girls have lain, and thinks of the loans
he will have no trouble repaying, and of
his career. Simone Weil said that faith
is “unthinkable, like suicide for a happy child”;
a bad comparison, for suicide
is always near. Somehow, as the student
contemplates his luck and talent, they
detach themselves from him. He tries
to get them back, to become them again, but
the effort depresses him. He’s found
crying in a corner; released after 72 hours,
he becomes one of the first. An Assistant
Director of Marketing, out of contact
for two weeks, his phone dead, suddenly
hurtles, stinking but swift, from behind
a dumpster near the parking lot –
knuckle-walking in his haste
to throw himself at the shoes, lick the shoes,
clutch the socks of the Director of Marketing,
and weep and incoherently plead.
In his screen-lined study, a CEO scans
the names of Senators and Secretaries.
It isn’t enough, any more,
to call them, or even to use
or own them. He can’t imagine calling them,
but sets off for Washington
in his bathrobe, mumbling. “Autograph hounds
are bad enough, paparazzi are bad,
but this is, like – ” says a star,
now accompanied everywhere
by a trio of Grovel Guards. “They’re very regressed,”
says a man from the Centers for Disease Control.
“What distinguishes them is the affect.
It’s different from that of your average
street schizophrenic.” I’m an excellent clinician,
he thinks, looking at his colleagues,
wondering if they admire him. Reagan
took eight years to acknowledge AIDS; the current
president addresses
the crisis in five. “We believe
in equality,” he says. “The fact that someone
is more fortunate than you, or has
a position of greater responsibility,
doesn’t make them a god. To think it does
is idolatry, and I’m opposed to that.”
The tech is skilled enough
to filter out the soulful zombie moan
from beyond the cordon. It’s the sort of lie
that keeps democracy going, thinks a guard
at one of the dumps where They live, admiring
the broadcast. Some parents trace
a lawyer there and rescue, i.e.,
abduct her; put her in a clinic.
After three months she can talk,
presumably. The torn
black dress, the shoes that once
had heels that kicked glass ceilings have
been burnt. She’s thin, with tubes
and restraints, and the affect
the CDC guy mentioned. “Why were you like that?
What did it feel like?” And they wait
while she gathers herself and sighs, at last,
“You’ve no idea what love is.”
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