Static Current

The anchor is talking in a measured, flat tone

about houses of straw and a wind that was blown.

I’m watching a man in a waist-deep gray tide

carrying a microwave with nowhere to hide.

He holds the machine like a sleeping child’s head

while the ticker-tape crawls with the count of the dead.

Wars and the weather, the rise and the fall,

I’m sitting here leaning my head on the wall.

The blue light is washing the color from my skin,

a digital salt for the state that we're in.

I see the scrolling names reflected in my glass,

watching the end of the world as it starts to pass.