Craig Kurtz: Perky Pat

Craig Kurtz · Perky Pat

“Shortly, he was aboard a thermosealed interbuilding commute car, on his way to downtown New York City and P. P. Layouts, the great pale synthetic-cement building from which Perky Pat and all the units of her miniature world originated. The doll, he reflected, which had conquered man as man at the same time had conquered the planets of the Sol system. Perky Pat, the obsession of the colonists. What a commentary on colonial life... what more did one need to know about those unfortunates who, under the selective service laws of the UN, had been kicked off Earth, required to begin new, alien, lives on Mars or Venus or Ganymede or wherever else the UN bureaucrats happened to imagine they could be deposited... and after a fashion survive.” —Philip K. Dick, The Three Stigmata Of Palmer Eldritch.

I like the plug –ins that I got

but add-ons are nice, are they not?

Let’s bump the house out just a bit —

that lower class life’s full of shit.

How ‘bout a Flapple in two-tone

with ionized jets, rent-to-own;

let’s get some surplus body parts

and more E therapy for smarts.

The TV set is ten-feet high,

the furnishings are from Versailles;

except the Wubfur rugs which hints

of our massive carbon footprints.

We’ll add a satellite to spin

the orbit of Saturn built-in

and fill it with cyborgs to show

our neighbors that we overflow.

This is the way life used to be

before enforced austerity;

somebody drained the world’s supply

but don’t blame me, I just get by.

Remember all the stuff we had —

the lower orders, that’s too bad;

things used to be so plentiful

but now our lives are inutile.

Of all white collar people that

I know now all play Perky Pat;

they transfer most their consciousness

into conditioned stimulus.

They take a drug which makes them think

they’re in a nebula that’s pink;

and in this world they reminisce

about the bougie rot they miss.

They’ve got their homes, they’ve got their clothes

and hedonism of Pharaohs;

they’ve golden mazes unexcelled

and colonies that are hand-held.

They’ve got it all, with sex appeal —

except that Perky Pat ain’t real;

and, meanwhile, right outside is piled

essentials for the self-exiled.