justice stands slack-jawed and stymied.
temperance storms off.
hope and faith break into a screaming match,
drowning charity's sobs.
prudence folds her hands,
purses her lips,
knows her sisters,
their sacrifices - ritual, cyclical, sometimes strategic but often shoddy.
their brothers have grown unwieldly of late.
her eyes land on fortitude.
the room silences in the weight of decision.
they return to themselves, encircle her, this patron saint of last stands,
nothing left to do in the face of such deadly sin
but to simply go on.
Tag: doom
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American values.
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on the precipice of doom.
in my mind we sit on the stoop
always quiet and comfortable and together
peer across the precipice between our worlds - his i’ll join eventually
and mine which he could no longer stand.
we sit inside the weight of all that i cannot know
in all that he's missed since
and we wonder of one another's dooms.
i try to find a verb for his - wanted? felt? did?
he finds he is not envious of the complexities of mine.
in my world i move to sit on the roof, circle "the precipice of doom" on a sheet of paper
i think of the way the cortisol flood must feel so similar between someone focusing the scope of their gun and someone waiting for the perfect moment to grab a person before they jump -
the way a trigger and a shirt tail can somehow feel the same in the body.
are we already there, on the precipice of doom?
if not individually certainly collectively,
what's another inch.
a frog allows itself to be boiled, slowly.
there are no poems
only things that are real that find a way to remind us of ourselves.
i think about how jumping and shooting another person are in fact two different ways of killing yourself.
how pulling someone back saves you both.
we are already there.
another inch is everything.
musée 