and we betray as we’ve been betrayed, because in our heads
we’re high priests while in our pants we operate
on a cash basis, we can’t afford to judge. We can’t exclude
our neighbors, old lovers, complete strangers. Except
that President who was a murderer and a liar,
and pedophiles and drunks, drunks who were bullies,
smug characters too, advice-givers. There’s certain music—
country or jazz—that sets us on edge, and we abhor
craters left by a drone that smashed the home
of some great-aunt of a Taliban. So it’s hard to say
what’s left besides bodies in a ditch,
our hard-heartedness, brittle as shell, because we’ve failed
so often, betrayed and been betrayed, because we’re lost
without each other and there are two melodies
in our heads, one for each ear, one by Wagner with anvils
and horns, the other by Mozart, with strings and bassoons.