Denial

 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.