Small wars are
fought daily, arson
is our flag, conflagrations
our gross national product, smoke is
always rising somewhere,
look for its sources and you’ll find reason
brittle and blackened in the embers,
compassion remnants scrap metal hot
in the embers, the bones of children
in the embers. Constant scent of meat
rising from the embers.  Gag reflex
would seem the only sane discourse left to us
once we see the embers, and yet
we start new fires, toss the same fuel
into them, stagger home to survey the sky
and go out again the next morning
to mourn over the same deathful embers
as if we expected things to be different
simply because we wrung our hands so strongly
over the deathful embers
we saw the day before.

For a long time, medical experts recommended
a daily gargle with salt water. So

she went to the ocean, where at once
she wished she had gone to the desert.

There were trees growing out of holes
in the city sidewalks back then. So

when she got home from the ocean she walked that walk,
only to wish she had instead talked the talk.

Every possible avenue has been exhausted
for the resolution of our most basic problems. So

she dwells now in a gated community where she dreams
of life on the road in a retiree-retrofitted RV.

If anything ever went as planned everyone would die
of shock followed by boredom. So

she is going to take notes on every dissatisfied moment
from now on.  At some point she will be content,

then a moment later will turn back
to all the other paths, just to see

if the same emotions rise to meet her
on different roads.

Dead flowers,
sang the Stones,
dead flowers
make a proper gift,
and roses
on a grave
make for
a proper response.

I don’t know
if that’s true,
but once
an angry woman
laid a fifty dollar bill on me

screaming that she
could not return
flowers I had given her
since they were already
dead and discarded.

I know
I could have used a grave
right then
in which to hide from her
and I can still feel
her blowtorch eyes today
though I truly cannot recall
what I did
to earn such
a rock and roll shaming
as that.