Pristine violence
like Jesus,
and all over the six o’clock news:
my gun,
your bullet,
an old man
who refused to share his orange.
There is always a war.
We chanted his eulogy with all the sympathy of wolves,
and whispered prayers that made you want to love someone again
once you emerged from your hijacked childhood.

I wish you would have read into it
when I told you to take things at face value.

There’s something about being Dorothy.
Maybe it’s the drugs
after the yellow brick road ends
and the scene dies.

We never die;
we only pick up Cotard’s syndrome

because we’ve been wishing on too many
fake glow-in-the-dark stars.