Can
you swallow
the bitter pill?
The pill that’s come
to dull our conscience,
cushion comfort, corners
nipped just so, sides longer
than tops and bottoms,
that exquisite little
emerald coffin-
shaped bitter
little
pill?

Life’s
fragility, life’s
impermanence,
life’s intertwinement
with imperfection and
disappointment—bitter
medicines (or are they drugs)

a realization of dread and
despair.  I wonder if those
crooning songs seduce,
induce indulgence
in an orgy of
escape into
the haze
of
narcissism…

or if they masquerade as friends to draw close,
sidling up so near to shove those pills dry
down our throats in rough and rooting
thrusting fingers ripping without a
drink to help them go down and
we, our own spoonful of sugar…
until we lie in thrall to
those fell jailers…no

enthralled to
no one but
ourself

that bitter
little
pill