If you see a nickel on the ground don’t bend to meet it

because it’s likely a disease nest, an assemblage of noxious

viral pathogens, it will turn your insides to jelly

after it steals your voice and makes all your holes leak

fluid the consistency of paper mache, or perhaps it will pass,

who knows in this uncertain age, where our leaders are a pantomime

circus of dung and vomit, society is a sideshow slideshow

erupting from our own minds as we look into a mirror

weeping “Why!?”

 

We would ask god but his ears are plugged

with the fact he doesn’t exist, not in any way

that would make a difference as far as you or anyone

could ever really know, making religion a drug,

not an opiate, but a benzodiazepine pill

because of it’s predilection to cause aggression

and behavioral disinhibition, which combine

messily to make for mass shootings and genital mutilations.

 

I watch the news and hear the wails of the prostrate

penitent prison punks, guards jam nightsticks

where the sun shines not, just for fun is what one would assume

given the way they smile, but the world is yours

if you can convince yourself its worth taking

by the handle, because at least you can blow

your brains out with it.