It's hard to resist.
Watching the news
makes us go stiff—
makes us feel serious
in the way
stark poems
used to.
Serious—
but not sober,
like a sublime encounter
with the terrifying existential
power of the ocean;
the post hoc rationalization
that nothing
is personal,
nothing is
goal-directed,
nothing
is shocking
shocks us—
shocks us just
hard enough
to get off.
