I came home from work early today,
and turned on the television
hoping to drown the truth
of my shallow regard, this
half-life, this pain
without purpose.

Bombs fell from the desert sky
as if to shock us into meaning:
during the commercial I swallowed
some codeine and pulled the handle
on my easy chair.

If in a hundred years
all this will be meaningless --
then where is the meaning now?

Disaster follows these believers
like a worn-out shadow -- black
fading into transparency,

the dead chasing the dead.

I am a patriot of a nonexistent world:
planting seeds in places
even the crows can't find.