Someone on my radio sings
"The world is getting better all the time..." as I drive up the hill into town
and begin braking down to five over the posted limit. I argue
with the drugs running through my head
"The world is dying all the time."
Perhaps it's just the pain meds kicking in,
making me curse the traffic I'm afraid of driving in
with my hands white-melted to the wheel
because some SOB can't decide if he belongs
in the fast left or in the suicide lane
that turns to Wally-World, the Arkansas glossed-up version
of an oversized Ben Franklin chain store that no one has ever heard of anymore
except in the old brickpaintingsigns on the sides of condemned buildings
in old end east St. Louis, on buildings leaning toward broken-windowed factories,
sawed-off metal fences, and towering cigars with unlit ends since the fifties. And
the world is dying
as I watch an almost toothless hag in a mumu and flip-flops
walk in front of parking lot traffic to reach the Dollar General,
a gaunt man in blackened pants and an orange leather jacket that belonged
to a child in the seventies
walk across a highway on ramp smoking,
and a woman in a motorized chair wearing three coats and a purple scarf
driving down the sidewalk with a sign on the side of her cart that says
"Repent, for the end is near."
Nearer, I'd wager, than the safety of my shut front door, empty house and dark bed
as I dart around the SOB
then pray for no pigs while pinning down the right peddle.

Don't drive after taking your medication. It could prove
to be deadly.