future
your favorite
TV show envisions,
our isolation
counts
as a pre-existing condition;
sex-workers
talk jargon
because intimacy
is cheap and too quick-
ly dismissed,
and "numbing-out"
is finally considered
a good thing—
synonymous not
with desensitization,
but a healthy respect
for the hard work
of avarice.
*
Maybe in reality,
the rules
of engagement
by which
we had governed our
most successful wars
were not as fixed
as we'd previously
been assured;
rather, they existed
as a random pastiche
of late night show monologues,
Lenten confessionals,
memorized stump speeches,
and Shakespearean soliloquies
overhead, truncated,
scrutinized to pieces,
then placed into a hat
to be taken out
of context.
