Sonnet #371

 We used to live without conditioned air

In every house and building we would sweat

In summer, and burn the fireplace to eat

Remember winter when the barren stares

Of hungry children forced a reckon ing

Separated from this we gaze upon the past as idylls

Simpler times, and they were simpler. Being

Dead is very simple. Living is harder still

For we keep alive by poisoning the tank we breathe in

The ground is scraped into a thin smear

And we live our complicated survivalism

Where every stone is bent to pillows, all tears

Become an echo of hardship past, and mortalism

When it appears, rends harder where the ground is tender