Choice
You can’t turn on the other side
with a very agile wrist;
you can’t decide to run and hide
or say, This side’s dismissed.
You can’t pretend it’s sporting cool
to switch the whole thing over;
this may be dry as dusty drool –
but here’s no field of clover –
there isn’t any place to opt
now that the button’s banned.
Your head is hurting, heart has stopped.
All choice must be unplanned.
The shadows, black, who stitch the night
with bullet-headed thread
are not on your side, never quite
on theirs. One side is dead,
the other dying, shot like fish
inside the proverb’s barrel.
You want a different take. You wish
for innocent apparel –
but you were there, and eating pride
before the blood was spilt,
and when they died, the other side
felt like a line of guilt:
don’t press red buttons any more,
don’t look for easy answers.
Despise the dance, it breaks the law,
but don’t forget the dancers.
No choice. You cannot swap the gin
for a cocktail or a highball,
nor see, above the kill-gun’s din,
the bullet in your eyeball.
Click here for the red button story
