National Fire Alarm
During the break-the-glass moment
when alarm blares between seas,
will the fire department and Lone
Ranger respond, will every abled
person lurch toward a musket
to save a nation from suicide?
Any pretense that the laws etched
in stone apply to the emergency
sits in a playpen at daycare.
“[I]n Order to form a more perfect Union[.]”
Arriving with a firehose to the struggle
against the divisive and incompetent
leaders torching the constitution,
proves worthless to the rescue workers.
A life safety jump net or strait jacket
team with a dump truck filled
with valium won’t quell enough to save
the day for the Western hemisphere.
The past looks to the volunteer
foreign wars veterans with hope.
When thugs project onto citizens,
justice disappears into thin air,
smoke columns soon an acropolis
for strangers from tomorrow.
No Rest Stop
The tire iron in a Styrofoam cup
each morning pries off hub caps
and wrenches at the engine
to start the day with a rev.
The lug nut loose behind the sensory
organs cracks open eyes at a fork
in the road to whisk a commute
into an omelet for fast talk ahead.
Hoodwinked by caffeine, sugar
blinkers the Jack out the door.
The mug at the Greasy Spoon
lunch counter idles until cockles
toast afternoon for selling a presence
on Earth to other door-to-door
sellers also rounding the bend
to repair evening attention spans.
Tired and tapping breaks this time
at a filling station, the once pumped up
driver now hooked on the brew
trucks for a home stretch.
After/Thought Literary 