flog me into submission you daily beast of ambition
beating your head against the concrete wall
of emails, text messages and phone calls.
my bleeding heart is no match for the blood you make run
from my forehead, my chewed hang nails, my nose, my heart,
my gums.
why don’t you take it out and show it to me in a broadcast not of beauty but of what’s happening in Africa or the Middle East? bleeding heart.
make me sick again and again with human rights abuses and corporate greed that pollutes the water that quenches the thirst of hundreds of millions of people, you beast, bleeding heart
quenches the thirst of you and me, our children and theirs. bleeding heart.
tell me it’s all in the name of nutrition, flavor, price savings and clean water and air – it’s cheap after all.
it’s cheap when we pick it up at the supermarket stocked with aisles and aisles and aisles and aisles and aisles
in which we lose ourselves among endless varieties of poison,
a disease-making cauldron packaged as a fruitopia eutopia
my kid screams when he sees the labels of the things he wants, squeaks with feigned happiness and glee
my kid screams when he holds the plastic that killed someone in its being made and will kill someone else in its disposal.
my phone rings. I pick it up and hand it to him.
he squeals again.
It’s his mother.
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