To be a broom is to be —
if you’re lucky —
old school,
built of wood and straw;

of course, you could be
metal and plastic and 
still get the job done
but somehow I suspect

you’d be yearning
to bristle naturally
at the cobwebs and grime
of the world.

Maybe you could
hope against all hope
to be a pushbroom,
industrial in size

and scope, heaving aside
the remains of work
with great arcs and strokes,
guided by a professional hand?

To be a broom 
would be an odd dream
come true for some
who lie awake wishing

to cleanse, 
to remove and leave behind
only shiny and new and
devoid of all except what you

countenance as useful
and needed. It would be
the perfect manifestation
for people like that —

people yearning
to empty great spaces
of those they see as dirt;
once they’d transformed

I could take them and put them
carefully into a corner or closet,
forget about them, leave them
to gather dust.

It’s gonna be OK,
new awakening,
new birth,
resurgence,
gonna get it all
figured out,

some say.

It’s a puzzle
how we got here,

some say.

OMG,
damn,
sigh,
who could have guessed,

some say.

Meanwhile
those long suffering masses
grown tired of screaming it out
sit on their worn hands
and aching legs

and say:

stop just reacting, 
proving as we suspected
that you’ve never listened 
to us;

it’s 
an insult and a 
crime to see your 
shock;

did you think

we were just frogs
croaking on cue

from the swamp,

background nature, 
seasonal messaging
to be heard but never understood?

May this swamp rise.
May your ground sink.
May you learn to hear
what we say

before we drown together;
most of all,

some say,

may you
(pretty please
with a strychnine cherry
on top
if that’s the only way
you can hear this)

shut up.

I shall honor today 

by eating lazy man’s lobster
out of a silk lined top hat,

butter slopping
aristocrat’s felt,

swigging leftover sherry
from the bottle.

I will honor today

by setting my feet 
on an autocrat’s skull

and sighing contentedly;
the smell of blood thick upon me.

I will build upon today

when I get my fat ass up
and make this mansion over

into shelter for thousands,
although right now I’m too full

of lazy man’s lobster
and sherry and port and bloodlust

to do more than acknowledge
how easy it would be

to just move in and take on
the mantle of the master.

I will honor tomorrow

only after I vomit
the greasy richness

that seduced me
onto the marble,

push myself away from
this bad table,

whistle
a Who song

about a boss as I 
walk away from the pyre

of this old world
toward something

terribly different,
differently terrible.

Do you have

right music,
right slang,
right stuff hanging under 
correct clothes?

How do you pronounce
your family name?

How do you count 
your money: with one hand,
two hands, a boatload
of servants to help?

Do you dream
America as you’ve been told
to dream it? Do you perform

your Body
as given,
as you’ve been
trained to do?

Do you consume as required?
Are you ravenous
for pleasure,
abstemious
with self-sacrifice?
Just enough pain
to pass around?
Is the resultant gain
yours alone
to take
and hand down?

In other words:

do you know the codes,
where to punch the keys,
into whose ears you should whisper
the passwords?

If so,

won’t you share them?

There are those who say,
do not succumb to despair 
in these days. Do not
hold the Adversary in contempt,
offer love in your heart, try to 
listen, try to understand

how their arsenic nation
was founded, how they closed
its borders and were shocked
to find us, terrified and confused,
within the walls. Wisdom, they say,
use your wisdom 
and keep compassion

for how threatened 
the Adversary feels these days, how
the bloom is off their funereal rose,
how they see the sky as a casket lid coming down
even as we have begun to dance
under our suddenly visible moon. Love them,
say some, honor their shaky hold on things

for we should know what it must feel like
to see the walls closing in after the grand history
of their fortress Earth. And then what —
as they crush us, do we offer them a kiss?
Look into the Adversary’s teeth and say,

so fine and pointy, so ready and built to rend?
There are those who say, we need to come together
and those who say we need to find common ground
with the Adversary: when their teeth come together
should we offer ourselves to be gnawed
in the common ground of their maw?

No.  No. Am not fodder, am not
ready for this.  I will not succumb to despair
but neither will I turn and open my arms
to the Adversary as they snarl into movement,
heavy limbs crunching live ground as they march.
No.  No.  You may offer compassion
but I will keep mine for my children, my land,
my own dance below my moon. My wisdom
for defense; my hand for any necessary blow;
my arm, weak or strong, for the War.

One by one they fall;
one by one in response come formal inquiries.
One by one, throat clearing and disapprovals.
No one calls it a pileup or a pile on.
No one calls it a trend or epidemic.
Each instance is an isolated incident
and unique and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there are
three and then three dozen and then
three hundred or more of them. Thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands. 
No one calls it out the same way twice.
No one says it’s deliberate, built in, systemic.
No one knows the right thing to say
and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there’s wind
and red glare and names and mistakes 
and deliberate choices. One by one. Steady drip
of incidents. Steady drip, drip, one by one by one
of blood and tears. No one dares admit it’s a war.
No one thinks fighting back makes any sense.
No one by no one saying the right things.
Body by body, one by one, no one calling it
until no one left can say a bloody thing.