As If

As Marat sinks into his bath of blood
as faces becomes one behind a mask
as Christ looks down from his cross at our sextopia
as the face of The Virgin appears on the greasy wall
as the Indian impotently weeps
as drop by drop the stone hollows
as spit fumes down the face
as the worker nods off on the subway
as the television talks to itself in the room where the corpse is sleeping
as the dictator swings his golf club
as whiskey burns down the throat
as the maniac speaks in tongues
as powder funnels through the Ulysses into the nostril up up to the brain
as the mirror is licked clean
as they arm children in Kansas
as they arm children in the Congo
as a little girl cartwheels on a litter strewn street
as hollywood cut-ups silk screen the unconscious
as the Hitchcockian matriarch extinguishes her cigarette in the egg
as the catheter sinks into boiling water
as the drunk dials your number
as the cockroach eats the dust of skin along the crease of the wall
as bodies bronze
as bodies rot
as the ozone opens its apocalyptic roof
as icebergs melt, drop by drop
as uninhabitable planets are discovered each day
planets of gas and fire
as the blue dot shrinks in a wide expanse
blue like a choking head
as the camera pans out, leaving us behind
as if there is no alternative
on and on until a new song begins

—Pete Rugh

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Pete Rugh is an activist with the International Socialist Organization and works as an independent journalist and radio news producer. He lives in Brooklyn, NY and authors the blog Notes for the Disgruntled. Published in Left Curve no. 35 (2011).