Poem XIV

Transparent days and oblique nights
The empty street a child’s theater
Time and space without sway despite
The tragic end that youth must meet.
The friction and heat of the small town feel
Convention in separation displayed
Like the potted plants on windowsills
Of three-bedroom homes with privacy fences
Often watered but never seen by
Narrow minds with tunnel vision.
In the soft glow of their living rooms
Where life is a flickering pantomime
A merciless, glaring, all-seeing eye
Invades this domestic privacy
As ever-present and consciously ignored
As an infirm relative in the back bedroom
Who emits shame at day and guilt at night
A part of life, immobile and fixed
A heat lamp for sick plants
Glued into its socket.