We’re a city of strangers and straphangers,
word junkies and poets,
one derailment
away from dysfunction,
two Valium short of rage,
as we rattle one another’s cage
and spread manure
to cover spewed ashes of the vitriolic masses,
mounds of words rising and falling,
notions crushed
or validated,
disrespected
confined
confirmed
or slaughtered
like incarcerated sardines
or corralled cattle.
Our limbs, once limber,
grow ossified and redundant,
our lips chapped and redacted,
as we become ever more accustomed
to the stoned silence of recoiled isolation.
We remove our corsets,
renounce sugar,
banish the carnivores,
think green,
yet will the world ever listen
to even one uttered, stuttered word we spout?
when we’re all creatures muttering simultaneously,
our overlapping words pure smoke —
and no one is paying attention to the fire.
© Connie Song 2021. All Rights Reserved.
