Suds Gone Flat
by Odin Roark

The safety of trusted acquaintances is endangered
as friendship-obsessions seems pandemic,
many buddying-up without thought or caution,
and like a cooler of drained beer cans
thrown into a mountain stream,
the whirlpool of social marketing
lures such buddy-doctrine through rocky challenges,
proselytizing friends in number as reward.

These care-free uninitiated,
oblivious to the hidden currents
and rapids downstream,
knock about in party-time oblivion,
giving fellow indulgence afloat a wide berth,
while crashing head-on into others.

And…

Comparable to empties from a 12-pack,
followers swirl about in their self-punishing maze,
like carnival rides with no purpose,
save the “woe is me” distaste of unwanted surprises,
the noxious surge of life’s inevitable jetsam.

Holding fate strangely in limbo,
other boundless mistaken-identities cascade by,
as they too think themselves innocent,
unaware a stream’s trickling playfulness,
is but gravity’s willingness to eventually
multiply into tributaries.

Sadly…

Foreign waters merge with the river-roar,
a chorusing “BFF” rising into the mist,
as the conjoined naïve plunge over the falls,
aloneness waiting below in mockery’s isolation.