Habituation’s Web

Habituation eased into town long ago.
Thought to be natural, it was.
Praised as stability, it was.
Embraced as destiny, it was.

Procreation ruled the nights,
delivery rooms the days.
Time passed and like flies to a sugar fix,
habituation swarmed bank tellers on payday,
local bars on Friday night,
churches on Sunday.

Workweek habits continued.
Harassment ‘round the water cooler.
Ass kissing ‘round the bosses.
Entitlement ‘round the calling-in-sick phone.

Then something happened.

Times got rough.
Unemployment rose.
Businesses shut down.
Preachers sought donations elsewhere.
Habituation stumbled out of town.

Darkness became the memory of enticement.
Silken webs hung furtively,
linking unlit lamp posts to shattered neon signs,
side streets to alleyways,
locked doors to broken windows.

Summer storms passed over
leaving muddy puddles,
their rippled reflections
but gurgling echoes to the moon,
joining other goodbye waves of regret.

Today…

In a political climate of fear,
a new infestation of impassioned hunters
polish their duplicitous glad-hands,
cheering for yet further bounties of false belief,
the lure to buy into the inducement

of both flight and fright,
believing this,
believing that,
unaware that magnetism
is barbed with many disguises.

Perhaps we should remember…

On a clear night,
or a dew-covered sunrise,
just as wings of abalone color
will flicker into habituation's seductive web,
so too might the lure of deception’s entrapment of dreams,
like the ensnared wings of flies,
become fractured rainbows…

Dangling,