The radiator’s hissing and popping
and there is nothing I can say
to add to that

except that it’s cold although
not quite winter or even high autumn
so it seems incredible
not quite real

Nothing in fact seems real
The rare pickup trucks screaming by
with bumper stickers professing love for Trump
in the back window
The smaller cars speeding by
bearing USA flags that speak ambiguously
of love or whatever for whatever this is now
No one drives a junker anymore
Half the cars have the new flat paint
in gray or red or that accursed white
that doesn’t seem quite right although
it’s supposed to be neutral

I want to stop them and shout at them
I want to stop them and say look what you’re doing
I want them to get mad and strike at me
with furious vengeance
with righteous anger
But I suspect I’m on the losing side
I suspect they’d cower and maybe call a cop
who will come by and either
lock me up or put me in a loony bin
or send me home

At home I would sit and pound
my palms with my face
My face ten years removed from daily engagement
with them — with a cause
I’d be a frog sitting in slowly boiling water
I’d be a dead man or maybe a dying man
knowing my time is cut and unraveling
a cotton string twisted wrongly
too many times to hold together strongly

At home I’d take all my daily pills at once
and lie down to take fate
by the face
Cradle it in my hands as I pass

Except I suspect I’d just get sick and toss them
from my stomach like a bad meal

I go back to the radiator and sit very still
Try to anticipate the hiss and predict the pop

My neighbors will never know the joy
of this anticipation of what will happen
Even though it will be terrible
Nothing will happen while I’m alive to see it
I will smile from beyond the grave at its occurrence
and when it comes to my neighbors I will pity them
though they know not what they do
though they will be surprised
though they will cower in shock
though they and their children may die
I will close my eyes
Die with them
in a storm of pity
hissing and popping all the way home

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T