people care
more about video games
on their cell phones
than cultivating empathy

and the cops will kill at will

as the masses press buttons of joy
hoping to not get caught in the crossfire
of this neoliberal meltdown

democracies fracture
empires end at the will of buffoons

and somewhere
something as simple
as an obscene hand gesture or a flat tire

will drive another person to murder

as i sit on the couch
burning in the embers
of another lost day

sucking at this second
tumbler of cheap vodka

staring out the window
looking for the answers to it all

hoping to catch a soft breeze
witness another side of the sun

than the one that burns
so hot and unholy

in the pale blue sky.

John Grochalski is the author of The Noose Doesn’t Get Any Looser After You Punch Out (Six Gallery Press 2008), Glass City (Low Ghost Press, 2010), In The Year of Everything Dying (Camel Saloon, 2012), Starting with the Last Name Grochalski (Coleridge Street Books, 2014), and the novels, The Librarian (Six Gallery Press 2013), and Wine Clerk (Six Gallery Press 2016). Grochalski currently lives in Brooklyn, New York, where the garbage can smell like roses if you wish on it hard enough.