Hornswoggled

As I walk home (a multi-brown hulk

Plopped next to the hushed flows of traffic,

A minor fifth achieved by angry honks

Before the thundering LIRR obliterates

All sense) I catch a burst of expletives.

Everything continues as before, unchanged,

That is, in constant flux, paying no mind

To the white distances I trek in thought.

A seagull, come inland today, roosts

On the neighbor’s balcony across the way;

His presence turns the snow to sea foam

While the bird itself morphs into a white crow.

I loaf in the cold of imperfection

And let the afternoon wash away my pride.

No doubt the demagogues on CNN tonight

Will issue dire prognostications to a world

That does not conform to the ego.

The black holes of identity spin around themselves,

Churning out the rhetoric of apocalypse

In xenophobic songs and kill crusades.

The Pharaohs of capital continue to erect

Slave-pyramids whose gravitational waves

Disturb the depths of the most placid soul

As no-go zones proliferate across the earth.

And, for all that, I and this mystery

Are never spent making a housecleaning

Of belief before the chrysalis of sleep.

Dream and building are one impermanence

To someone or something in danger

Of winking out of existence unnoticed

In the darkness beyond names and forms.
My opinions don't matter now.

A menacing snow-black seagull

Tells me there is still time to go back inside.

I will loaf in the cold of imperfection

And let the afternoon wash away my pride.