A country in denial of its dying
In the nursing homes where no laws live,
In the streets where cops brook no law,
In stores where hate is only nine millimeters away,
In schools where active shooter drills punctuate adolescence
With delusions of survival, like hiding under the desk
For when they dropped the bomb,
We have our children practice their deaths.
Deaths fertilized in offices
Where men whose corruption
Is only visible in the lives of their children
Live under the illusion of health
As stinging killing water pours from faucets
Mocking you with its wetness and illusion
Of life.
A land where the presumption of normality
Is so revered that people die, choking out
With their last words denying their own living death
Breathing down upon them,
And the slow mountainous collapse of Life itself,
Life in any form
Which humans know as living.
Our work, our children, and our lives worth living -
These are the enemies of life; they carry us
To our deaths.
We are living
Bent on dying
As we lived,
Because a good death
Is the mark of a good life,
And we are good people.
Life is unbound
Within us.