The Shirley Card

Adjust your toner to be sure
That pale skin comes out perfectly
In a palette of bright colors,
Which, of course, ensures that dark tones
Will look alien, inhuman,

Strange blots, at best merely funky.
The least believable art form
Depicting human behaviors
Remains the tragicomedy,
Melancholy materials

Mixed so that the ending avoids
Catastrophe. Catastrophe
Is the guarantee, beginning
Even with the best intentions,
To say nothing of more mixed aims.

Give us more dramas that give us
Glorious comitragedy,
Where the happiest inventions,
The brightest, most garish color
Photography, will fix, well mixed,

A blood-dark, smudged catastrophe.
Isn’t that human history?
It’s not some noble tragedy.
It’s lurid, funny, colorful,
And that way comes to misery.