I worry
that we have worried so much
about things we didn't need to worry about
at all

the revolution people and the revelation people

who can only imagine harm in every presence,
who can only project peace into every absence

forgotten motives and lost incentives
radical orthodoxies
cudgeled by atrocity
then comforted by insincerity

specter spectrometry
there is a vacancy without veracity
an inaccessibility of significant opportunity

people locate themselves
(choose to locate themselves?)
too far away from other people

now

never have there been more of us
packed so densely together
and we react by elevating
the maintenance of distance,
as a strategy, to a science

again the word that presents itself is lamentation,
and again I decline to acknowledge it and choose another,
less suited, less meticulous, more tolerable vocabulary