Discount Kings
After Shelley
So now may any casual traveler find along the littered highways of our lands the wooden legs of long forsaken signs suspending still their images and brands, but warped and faded, pulpy as their claims: ꜰʀᴇꜱʜ ᴘʀᴏᴅᴜᴄᴇ!—ʟᴏᴡᴇꜱᴛ ᴘʀɪᴄᴇꜱ!—ʙᴇꜱᴛ ɪɴ ᴛᴏᴡɴ! The slogans and superlatives and names that churn upon the ever-changing now include within their clutter ʏᴏᴜʀ ᴀᴅ ʜᴇʀᴇ, the soul of all the rest. For souls decay by a siphoning; let tongue or eye or ear or hand receive, but the judicious way to ornament a shorter road to hell is not with what you buy, but what you sell.
The artist above has a whole series on billboards. I encourage you to check it out.
https://substack.com/@jasonrhode/note/c-294353892?utm_source=notes-share-action&r=a4ir8
I read (and listened to) this in bed this morning, before I was totally awake, intending to come back to it later, which I’m doing now. Did the word “casual” appear as “causal” in the version I read earlier this morning, or did I just misread (mishear) it because I was half-awake and about as alert as Ozymandias half-buried in sand. Also, this piece had me thinking of a Philip Larkin poem about billboards whose name escapes me.