Pennsylvania Twilight

Buckling into the multiple

Blue arms of the guards

Moments unspool across

The rusted coils of his mind

Unhappy father grimace

Through a real estate mustache

A millipede climbing the side

Of a construction site shack

Apartment towers reflected

In a moonlit puddle

And the moment of the first lie

"I didn't take the fiver!"

Shouted across the kitchen

Toward mom by the blender

Suddenly there were two worlds

This one & the one he made up

And if they didn't believe him

It didn't matter

He would believe it

Or pretend to

And this would cause some of them

To change their minds

"To stop wildfires

Vacuum the forests"

Do they really believe

This shit

"The source of your pain

Is the workers toiling

In sun seized fields

And boiling kitchens"

The world is what I say it is

He thought

It's the grand gestures I do

He thought

Accordion move arms

In a boxy blue suit

Red tie like the tongue

Of a panting dog

A maudlin fist pumped to the air

In the Pennsylvania twilight