Sound Of The Grasshoppers

They haven’t needed to burn books
in years to keep people from reading
them. Narcotics are given out like
Halloween candy and their chalk like
texture is soothing to the people that
take them daily with lemon lime soda.
Hours are spent on pool decks doing yo-yo
tricks and watching as girls jump from
the elevated platforms into the water.
Employees that don’t know what their
doing punch single digits of code into
their machines one at a time until it wakes
up and tells them they can stop.
No one stands up to anyone anymore especially
the older people who dream desperately for
the day they’ll start getting checks in the mail.
The supervisor watches his workers through
a series of cameras in a room not connected to
anything, and is always ready to cut someone
loose for the slightest mistake.
Authorities surround the car of a fugitive that
has turned over on its side in the middle of an empty
highway. They order him to come out, but he doesn’t.
Grasshoppers make noise in the tall weeds on the median,
and nothing else seems to even matter.