The Well

The Well

The well is full of fear,

and every day we have to

drink poison, bathe in it. 

We know the well

is broken and fearful

but pretend we do not know

what broke it.

The village is clamorous drunk with

senselessness, blank and softened in that acid bath,

so that the pale flickering light

that shines sly behind every curtain

burns indelible images on damaged corneas

and rumbles an echo of wardrums into half-deaf ears

to sell cornflakes and cars.

Every soul must buy a badge and

every house have a plague cross on the door,

marked red or blue, and at primetime a bell rings

to bring out the ones we wish dead--

The Socialists or

The Patriots or

The Illegals or

The Not Real Americans or

whoever we've learned to hate today--who?

They're already gone

hauled off and dumped

in the dead waters that feed the well.

Every day the fear gets louder, the blue light stronger and

more curdling, the water less able to quench

as drinking it becomes sweeter.

It makes the mind dizzy and eager to

congratulate itself on its sapient foolishness, or

buzz with an insectile thought-erasing rage, as it

stings reason to death.

The well is broken, but we drink from it anyway.

Soon now it will be drained by the thirst

and the bucket will go down

deep down into the heart of dissolution

and come up not just heavy with

mud and iridescent sludge 

And venom that

clings like grief to the mouth,

but with the secret that lives at the bottom of the well:

that we are the ones

who broke it.

November 2010

Written for the Monday November 8^th Prompt at Big Tent Poetry, which was to use a book title from the New York Times Bestsellers List. I chose Broke, by Glenn Beck.