June Calender writes

Sick of It

I wanted to write, I truly tried to write
about the tarnished orb of the harvest moon,
the jewel brilliance of burning bushes,
the fat squirrel with his bouncing balloon tail,
the flaring apricot sunrises and gold rimmed clouds,
but my body wanted to cough and cough,
gasp for breath and make my ribs ache;
my voice could only rasp,
and my nose snorted snot.
Then we changed the time again,
a senseless imposition everyone hates.

My thoughts were crackling static on our sick
world, especially the country I want to love
where I grew up in near poverty but no violence.
Now rich old men send ill-educated young men
to wars without a purpose and without an end;
where drug companies have co-opted doctors
to addict people, even unborn babies, to pills
only the dying in their final throes could not abuse;
where men with and without power grab and grope
and otherwise see women as boobs and cunts;
where men whose grandfathers killed most of the bison
eat “buffalo wings” and collect unneeded guns;
where police always shoot to kill, even the unarmed;
where bullying Big Shots threaten nuclear annihilation
and our abundance of home-grown sickos stalk
churches to massacre men, women and children.

These thoughts will not leave my fevered brain;
I don’t get sick often and I don’t have enough tissues.
I need more tea and lemon and honey. I don’t eat
buffalo wings and, hell, I don’t even have a TV
but “the world is too much with me”. It makes me sick
enough to go transgender: I’ve just got to paw the ground
and snort, toss my long horns, gore the cowboy
and write a rant.

Buffalo Cosmos -- Kelly Moore