On Tonight’s Program
How many millions of faces are aflame, lit
by sickly blue flickers in prefab living rooms tonight
as canned laugh-tracks and empty sighs blend
with hoarse, insistent cicada drone? The laughter
is a moth flitting around a flame. The monologue
sounds like a catechism designed to save no one.
In other rooms they’re talking strategic targeting,
collateral damage, what no one will talk about tomorrow.
A washed-smooth stone lies on a riverbed
like a tumor lodged behind the left eye,
motionless, embedded, elemental.
Shouldn’t there be something we could do?
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