Ask the fire
The day Don Rickles died we went to war.
A dark sky streaked with red smoke
like bloody tears leaking sideways from stars,
signal flares just messages in broken bottles
dropped out the portholes of sinking ships.
No one was laughing.
Where was Kendall Jenner?
Not placing a Pepsi in the limp hand
of every dead parent of every dead child.
Not turning her cunt into a refuge
for orphans or smearing her lipstick
on the phallic ends of Tomahawks
meant to distract the world from treason.
Kendall Jenner was irrelevant again,
in less than a day of Twitter shame,
a soft drink could be a soft drink again,
and an erection could be an erection.
This is why April is the cruelest.
There’s a black hole beneath every bullet-
proof vest. And no one changed their profile pic
to the Syrian flag, except the poet
everyone had already decided to ignore.
60 is an even number, suggesting
a fair and balanced approach to death.
Just ask the fire.
It burns in the windows of churches
and terrorist cells the same,
a hell we keep choosing to make
instead of offering to take shelter
inside a glass of water.