Keep his distance (poem)
Keep his distance
He is much closer now to his condemners
Manners, if good social manners
would stop the driver of a van
He will sit, monitor this scene through a dirty screen
A wireless device at rest near his resting hand
Hand that touches no lover’s knee
She in the seat beside him
(Where to eat? What to see?
I treasure you, my Normal. My Pass. My Key.)
He could have bought a lover, if everyone winks these days
if no love be in it, if arsonist derision is the way now
Of the era
He would not be The Man at Odds
even his congressman hates, and wants to kill
His brain would not, mind fallen numb
Lock onto pretty faces, girls with their mothers
Spot unearned cockiness in the male young
The thumb to answer this bred-in impetus
Sirens scream
His place of parting marked by a crater
As like an asteroid he’d hit
And they want to mock this, top it, bungee an inch or two
Farther
His death toll become a bar to vault
Keep his distance
Aground
(2021, Stephanie Foster)
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