When I see another news story
about inflation most of us can’t afford
without taking a second or third job,
I wonder if now will be the day
somebody will have enough of suffering
and put an end to this campy nightmare.
To add to the sorry sight of it all,
I can’t believe the world’s acceptance
of the status quo right now,
yet have no problem consuming from it,
since I don’t really have a choice
if I’m to live, as many service workers
have known throughout the centuries,
one’s who’ve worked with the sick
and plagued, for instance.
I imagine they knew they were being
important and good,
but when realizing martyrdom
and killing the caretaker
before the victim
was sold as an acceptable,
even noble norm by the upper classes,
they wanted to change course,
but were coerced away from doing so
for lots of reasons,
some of them environmental,
but most of them iterations of greed
cloaked in high religiosity and oath,
in other words, guilt.
This I think about
whenever I’m overwhelmed
by a concoction of scarcity in the world,
by basic needs not being met, cross-culturally,
and fear-based news
like the kind we’re seeing about
the current president with all his wars
and tariff tantrums.
Like the way some animals
when threatened by a predator,
will fall asleep to keep from experiencing
pain sifting through their flesh
like hot bees made out of lava,
I only have to hear his name
and I’m doing whatever I can
to ground myself in basic sensations
in order to keep from going completely
unconscious and walking angry
into traffic unintentionally,
me totally unaware of my environment
because I’m lost fantasizing about
me being on an aircraft carrier
somewhere outside Iran,
where I’m arguing with another soldier
about the ethics of remaining on the boat,
and to prove my point, I’m stepping off
the edge into the sea
with an I-told-you-so wave,
almost as if I’m saying I’ll be back
tomorrow to be an idiot another day,
but then, like in a gallows slapstick,
I get torn to shreds in an instant
by the whirling blades of
yet another gratuitous and now
disgustingly comforting unthinkable.