Please Read The Prospectus Carefully

 

Congratulations, you've won Paradise.

Don't sweat the taxes, though with a prize like this

You'll get the salesmen and the beggar saints,

The clansmen and the classmates and the shame

That everyone else is licensed to contend

With sin, the petty and the deadly, all

The fallout of an autumn day at home.

But you, you will be here, in Paradise,

With 40,000 gourmet restaurants,

Emerald beaches, one-string harps who play

The Goldberg Variations. You have won

Eternities of room service and sea

Turtles to ferry drinks. (You have the time.)

The waste is heavenly, because there are

Malebolges of malcontents, their misery

Palpable as an egg, grit in their eyes,

Their tears a resin thicker than shaved ice,

And lupus. And the starving tots. Disease

Went AWL, but not so memory,

That vague disquietude, something like gas.

Read the fine print. Sign on the dotty line.

And tell your friends. Oh, tell them twice. We're waiting.