The labor shortage 

Allows a city employee, 

To lower their head, oblivious to passing strangers

To aim their leaf blower

And push debris toward the curb, where a street sweeper 

Collects our cigarette butts,

dead foliage,

hair follicles,

receipts,

bottle caps,

paint flecks,

toilet paper scraps 

And lip skin gnawed apart in strip search fashion, 

Building the Wasteland 

for the whimpering end,

To begin again and again, et al. 

A technique to rename Hyperreality

As 

Politicians 

Claim that 

unemployment benefits 

Sway potential hires to remain infatuated

With their couch cushions and sitcom reruns. As opposed to 

Directing trash to its reincarnation, or

Acquiring spit wads, springing forth from loose tongues 

Blabbering about the imperfect conditions 

Experienced by parishioners, 

Following the Copernican Principle.   

Comet tears direct 

A leveler’s precision 

To balance a drying jello-mold.

Foundations wobble and

Dictate available work

And insist sure-footing isn’t shaking

From centuries 

Of humans adjusting their sleep schedules

To the Industrial Age. Tossing

And turning. Turning and tossing

And peering over at the BLUE SCREEN OF DEATH

Alerting them about another beautiful stranger, 

Past their prime, hoarding the stones 

We desperately need to build infrastructure. 

2.

Mosquitoes hatch and their fresh bodies 

Travel to open windows,

Land on mesh screens. 

They spend a quarter of their lives

Locked on boundaries,

Peering inside at the blood 

Which sustains them,

Unaware the only reason 

Their species survives

Is because there’s so many 

Of them available to die.