Electricity

Unloading guns to count the bullets,
each of them with faces
drawn on them like missiles
on a fighter plane.
We do our part every day,
but no one really knows
where it’s all going,
what final picture
our collective effort is painting.

I’m becoming more doubtful
that it is beautiful.
People wash their faces
with the water from the cleanest
looking puddles on the street,
and when they finish, what’s left
becomes their mirrors.

I watch them shepherd themselves,
with no home to go back to,
into a place that they hate
to make money that will
never be enough.

The walls of our cities
corral us tighter than we realize.
I stand on the sidewalk
as people push past me
from both directions,
all just breathing in
what those around them
breath out.

Suffocating on each other
in angry violent throws,
that travel across the body
like electricity.