Status Updates From The Door

Deception is the air we breathe,
we couldn't live without it.
Don't you want things nice?
Don't you want to have fun?
Don't you want your dinner?
Clap your hands and wish very hard.
That's what we're eating:
Wish food.

Wish food lies on the plate.
It twitches. It's still alive.
You wouldn't want a dead wish. . .

Eat, eat, the body says:
Here comes starvation
blowing towards you like a dry wind.
Nobody has a plan.

What alerts us? What are we feeding on?
We take everything in,
one wound after another.
Rubble, rubble, say the guns.
Our faces gleam in the glassy flicker,
the night rises like smoke.

Oh hide your eyes--
better to sit in a muffled room,
doors locked, appliances unplugged,
with nothing but the photo view
of Niagara Falls you bought last summer
all that soothing water
like warm green toffee flowing

. . . The world becomes
one huge deep vowel of horror,
while behind those mildewed flags, the slogans
that always rhyme with dead,
sit a few old guys making money.

When you stand on bare earth in your bare feet
and the lightning whips through you, two ways
at once, they say you are grounded,
and that's what poetry is: a hot wire.
You might as well stick a fork
in a wall socket. So don't think it's just about flowers.