After all the people shouting
at viewers who already agree and are
galvanized like nails
waiting to be hammered
as if tines on a tuning fork
yet somehow out of key
locked in false times
under their thumb.
After all the people shouting
from broadcast towers
in places we’ve never been;
people we’ve never met
tell us what is up and send us to
our phones so we can shout
back into the void and
witness our own ratings fluctuate like lies
upon the waves.
After all the people shouting
it will be nice to squat
broken in the cinders
and try to figure out how to
survive in silence.
Because I cannot buy milk
with digital hearts and thumbs.
And whatever followers there were
will have been cast to the ends
as a bag of splinters
in gale-force, straight-line,
or cyclone winds.
Sure, my kids will be crying,
hungry for food.
Soft whimpers and stomach cramps
in the night. Searching for sleep
and remembering warm Christmas
and knowing that the violence
of a mob fighting for Black Friday tv’s
was just a harbinger.
A peephole in the dam.
What we were
and what we thought we were
were very different things.
But that watering hole was unnatural.
The stream will run again.