LITTLE DO WE KNOW

My vision is lined by the shades in my window,

everything crossed with dark white bars so that tree

is sliced into thirty-two pieces from root to crown.

The inharmonious note of that crooked pipe along

the top of my fence where a limb crashed on the way

down, tells a tale of the ordinary here and now.

All things are bent, dissonant, and stink.

That zen we keep trying to do because love

is all you need, but there are always blemishes, like

that elfin painted lady on the corner of Willow

and Elm with those telephone wires plastered

across her face, violent interruptions at every turn.

What are we supposed to do with these surreal

dreams of an improving world where war, ha!

ends, and all our other inhumanities become

a shame we bear on bent shoulders. Bah!

In our wild-eyed, headlong rush to lesser things,

idiocy has reached critical mass at this pessimal

time, we pull the handle on on our plush recliner

and remember to ponder the irony of Yeats’

“The best lack all conviction, while the worst

are full of passionate intensity” a perfect

prophesy long before its time, and there it is,

that rough beast, its hour come round at last.