I HEARD YOU WERE SET ON FIRE
I HEARD YOU WERE SET ON FIRE
For twenty dollars
you can buy all the food it would ever take
to fill even a large man’s stomach
and lay in the sun beside the ocean
and sleep.
We live well
compared to others we do not see.
Well enough to not think about them
but once or twice a month at best,
on the off occasion
that they stray onto a path
obstructing our momentum.
We see them then
but in all the wrong ways
and with all the wrong thoughts -
as the king sees the angry masses,
as the newly sober sees his tipping point,
as the uncertain see all the awful possibilities.
A reminder,
not of what we could do to become better
but of what we shouldn’t do to become worse.