noise tramples conversation as
mouths move with words scratched asunder,
ass under, under all asses left
frowning at understanding the
plight of screaming babies and
righteous cackling parents,
memories of bad poetry you wrote in
grade school and in high school and in college and in life,
memories of false stories passed along as truth,
those stories lingering among
ancestral lies that sustain us,
lies that keep us whole.
unused batteries eventually explode,
sending love letters through bullets and
acrimony through soapbubbles until
everything is normal again, until
everything flows through
this world’s shirts as
blood through an hourglass,
dripping with unassailable precision from
rotten hearts left gawking at the rapture.