Dum-dum

Dum-dum

What the assembly wants to understand

Everyone we are on page three hundred sixty-four

The hour is near the break

Watch through years of circling the outerbelt

Neighborhoods go down once the charred shape

of a wing shorn

Plane was a moment worth eulogizing stamped

On the split-levels of a small town

Once, when human tragedy was big

Say you’re nice

Say you’re honest

Hearsay she says makes an orphan of the law

Horns and motors sound, the auto parts ad ends

And the blowhard begins

You’re in the store

The woman snatches herself away you say

“I’d like to buy this”

Make it dumb for the people

Dum-dum doom like the melody to stop

the absent hand probing the chip bag

Mouth-breathing flea behind the louvered door

A faint shadow sidling out of view

A child of six or seven told she has no future

the radio plays Angie Baby Eleanor Rigby

She will be crazy and lonely one day

Yet here, the boogeyman snags himself

on the tricky mechanism

Not that he doesn’t get you

The Clue

(2016, Stephanie Foster)