A body of water

Hot across my jawline,
up my nostrils and down my sinus
my eyes burrow brow and strangle my spine.

The people on television with orange skin
at once cry what is wrong
and what is wrong with them.

A laugh cry thing-
do they joke,
am I,
or is the joke the fashion it’s told?
Laugh or laugh with them?

This is the aria of what we eat:

The potholes in asphalt

are craters carved cautiously by mad scientists on Discovery
to make room for commercial breaks

and are

dishes of unrest
burned into our foreign lands
for the benefit of startled villains in stretched Hanes
who are also men smiling for glamour shots
under balaclavas and banners proclaiming beneficent actions
that bury lands in craters
and balaclavas and Hanes

and are

parts of children and human shields
in ruined babymalk factories storing arms
and ignorance and symmetrical history

and are

potholes we avoid with a flick of the wrist
or miss and drive over in a moment of uncomfortable jostle
that wake us for a moment on our way

and are

nothing but a series of unoriginal geography
peppering the landscape like Oh’s in a photograph of the moon
but plus erosion
so that the Oh’s are more like ‘Ah’s’ of wading in an August stream
that’s been running longer than the bombs have gone off
on asphalt on television and in my head.

And are these contemplations mine?
Or do we all make them
sitting on our ass
watching things go by

like breasts descending with age
hairs turning gray
skin growing lined
mind go blind-

aretheyisthis the way things go?
Like some Greek said,
‘The next generation’s worse than the last?’
(I paraphrase)

Or is this the bank of a stream;
the Mississippi really wrenching away
those bold protrusions of earth that peer into the bends of moving water?
Or
do both reach the same end?