A fissure in the ice kneading.
The land mass receding.
The creaking floorboard.

No longer in my conscious register,
the sound becomes a rhythm to which
I live.

In rending,
splitting,
click-ticking,
gradual,
infinitesimal
increments-

In cartilaginous pops I dance
along to the sound that I ignore...
The creaking floorboard.

A well and boiled frog, I am.
My sticky tongue ate up that scam.
Webbed toes can't swim away
The lid is closed for holiday.
Don't know what I coulda done
Nobody coulda saw that'd come.
My frog anatomy succumbed
to temperatures about a ***-
dred and seventy-three,
and for the perfect duration
to cook me.

Now that cruelty owns the day and night
my shame is for my petty plights.
This life I spent
belaboring,
and savoring
my own productivity.
Creatively struggling
just to be
a member
of society.
Why didn't they tell me it was just a joke?
Those who have will have some more,  
and the rest of the poor folk...

On the way back from the abyss,
the dramatist starts and fits,
"Put me back in the black again,"
with squeezed fists and limp wrists.

The darling's staple diet of bad news,
black coffee and sweet candy
kept their spirit sickly.
Obviously.

Exposed to blaring overcast,
the dramatist retracts,
surprisingly intact.
In fact stronger than before
now in their validation.

Returned to comfy pit,
went the dramatist.
For the pit inhibits
in consistency.

No new delights,
or flights of fancy.
Not to be caught
between what's seen
with eyes shut,
or what they see.

The dramatist,
in the blackened emptiness,
will never notice
when they've passed
the horizon.

I began,
petty, indulgent,
with a dream to fulfil.
Building places to hide,
to protect my child mind.
The wish, instilled
longing
with no plan.
"**** the boy,
become a man."
bound in duty
twisting enjoyment
to what task
he is unsuited.

The leaky dam looks fine from here.
Just— stand right there.
Can you believe, there've been thirty accidents
since last September.

Statistically, for this facility,
that's rather subdued.
Oh, ignore that light.  
It won't stop blinking,
so we're having it removed.

A hat is made from a heart.
The marrow becomes electricity.
Streaking red blood and bone.
Fortune's tenacity.

Well, so long. Arrivederci.
This ending was foretold
—quite early.

The fall of civilization?
It's worse than ever.
The president's a predator.
Severing the center
of all faith's endeavor.

In the political theater,
is there none left to deter
the destructive fervor
of he who eats forever,
and the treasury deleter?

Can we possibly endure
the elusive obscurer
who denies the blur,
that all sides incur
when their lies inure
in the mind of the voterrrr?

Prrrrrobably not.

The new-normal is "Hypernormalization,"
of which
few things rhyme,
but,
given time,
we're certain to accept,
the only "truth" there is,
is what the president says.