the world: a Welcome to it

Welcome to our little enclave of fools,
geniuses, true loves and fond lookers-on,
big-talkers, good-timers, tough livers
and die-hards, children of all ages and
elderly personages of all youths and persuasions, characters
whether wise, wizened or otherwise;
conspiracy buffs and chaos-theoreticians
(but not theorists) of the highest order,
lowlifes (not "lowlives"?) of the wildest disorder,
gentry of the narrowest deportment,
seers of the deepest discernment, skeptics
of the shallowest razor-fine faith
and logicians of the headiest precision -
orators of the most precise diction
and erudition, doyens of distinction
(half-driven to distraction, alas),
cretins, thieves and minotaurs,
werewolves and cultists in unitards,
cyclopean unicorns and other such fanciful
monsters, eloping with the most bedrock sound
mind-and-body materialists imaginable,
veritable sainted atheists with angel's wings
in a manner of speaking, a match made
in a match factory, too many anarchists
spoiled by their pampered upbringings,
opening up soup kitchens
serving bomb soup with noodles
for $1.99 a bowl, and a peck on the cheek
thrown in from your choice of seabird.

However, having said all that,
completely without bias or prejudice I want
to welcome you

once again to this little patch of bliss,
notwithstanding the nearly complete lack
of innocence among most of the the participants;
we are, right after all is said and done, planning
to keep right on saying and doing until the cows
come marching in and the fat lady singles out
the cream of the cream into individually-wrapped cheese
slices. But all of that's for another day. I'm bushed,
and blushed, and blustered and rapidly dwindling
into lush sheets and pillows, to sleep perchance too late,
and so I must bid you mon dieu.