"People Get Sick"

People get sick

People get sick
and we want them to get better,
but we also want them dead.
They live, and it's more of the same.
How we hate our wish to kill
what we cease to care for,
unwilling to bend. Cloak our weakness
in another's dazzling end.
Our mourning faces court the upset
due to us for lasting.
The single breath is ours.
We grab it, snuff the competition,
one less call to make or card to send.

Connections make us
want to fall in love,
even as our arms blast up to block its hasty approach.
We see our needy doubles in their mirrored eyes,
cast them out to blind in thistle-patch,
then lick away the scratches on their faces,
mad about ourselves. We flaunt the bait,
performing lonely, finding out too late
the act has worked. The merge occurred,
and we must do the time
or, breaking out,
shoot the wives and husbands,
drive the children into lakes.

War is hell, so we lament it,
grab for peace
like nature wants it for us.
We, the blessed, arrange
our words in suitable ritual order,
spinning tales inscribed on plaques
at bases of status we hunger to topple.
Who dare speak revolution?
aware we are among those who would lose
their lives (or are we?),
loyalties concealed behind our upheld hands,
warming at the crater's smoking orange edge.

—Barry Perlman

thanks, astrobarry