Life Explodes

Friday, twelve, thirteen, thirteen, might it be a double whammy?
Do thoughts, talk of superstition make your hands feel clammy?
Knock on wood, upon your desk? Or for now just use your head?
No telling what this might be made of now, is it tanked instead?
Toss the spilled salt over your left shoulder, where the devil hides
Wait, am I confused, isn’t that where fell death supposedly rides?
Cover all sneezes, with your hands, with your own chosen blessing
Use a tissue or cloth, ensure no demons may slip in and be messing
If a black cat walks under your ladder, then walks across your path
Must you go back home, stay there, wash up and take another bath?
If supermodels smashed mirrors right and left, set a record number
Would a thousand years ill luck kill fashion, put all budgets asunder?
Step on no cracks, break no mothers’ backs, because you love them
Don’t turn widdershins three times, all go to church and sing a hymn
Or do it all and wildly laugh about it, fear of the unknown feels so old
No one really understands life’s meaning, so you go ahead, be bold

All of this may feel fraught with meanings or with absolute silliness
It might still be both or neither and still it will not clean up our mess
Whether you believe this or don’t, may not matter much quite soon
When standing cold in endless breadlines as the wealthy call the tune
Will you then consider eating black cats or using that ladder to steal?
To feed the ones you love, you will civilization’s thin veneer reveal?
Sorry I’ve turned so serious, I’m quite superstitious about ignorance
Still, I may be the only one to see my vision, to stop this I ‘d dance
Naked with a four-leaf clover and thorny rose hard between cheeks
Twirling on that pinhead where those angels do cavort, what freaks
I would rebuild the Tower of Babel and relearn, invent the languages
Or give up eating breakfast, never again ask for or eat link sausages
I’d slowly peal my skin from tip to toe and never even make a sound
If I had even one slim hope this would stop what I see coming down
Art and words hold for me that thin hope, how I choose to share it
Yet superstition may prove as efficacious, so I’ll bless you, I swear it