Bike Heaven

In the old warehouse of big business sits

Bike Heaven:

The remnants of past American

Ambition.

It is the junkyard of vain innovation:

Bikes with springed spokes, bike-shaped jokes,

Oreo-themed bikes, a butt-powered bike—

Iterations upon iterations of the same old idea—

Creative energy squandered in the rat-race for

Money.

It is money they’re all searching for:

The bikes scream, “Me! Me! Me!”

In their antiquated voices fading into noise,

In vain for consumers long-gone to give them a hoist.

It is a place of infinite consumption, of infinite consumerism,

An infinite labyrinth of infinite profiteerism—

Infinite, for the American spirit never dies—

The thread that connects all the past and the nigh:

The drive to become the new self-made man.

I hear the tinny country singer sing

Of hard workers making the bling

On the failed innovation called a radio-bike.

So this is where the products of hard workers go,

The refuse of failed American dreams.