How much does it pay to be encircled by dragons?

Fears of changing lines. Erasure.

Forfeiting when all you ever wanted was to win

Never considering how winning too has a cost

How maybe weakness isn’t a sin

How differences are enriching

How it’s ok to be a freak

So here we are

Me with the questions

You with that slippery story from the other side

Twisted through reactive cerulean eyes

All their distortion of your view

Maybe that’s what warped you in the end

Made you so territorial

But nobody ever wanted your stuff

Nobody wanted your successes because every simple merit has its cost

So you never needed that gun to keep your shelter safe

Your property was never endangered

What you most needed to secure you always had within you

Because what defines our character is the true quality of our outrage

Not how good it makes us feel about ourselves

So when you said the Mexicans are the problem

Your new Negro-Problem:

Mexicans…

It gives me great pause

I wonder about all that effort that created your fisheye view

That Orwellian linear algebraic programming mind control

News head-stalking and scratching

Centuries of exponential cerebral cluster mind-fucking

That spell they cast upon you

How you are so special

But in a world of single-digit GFR scores, tell me

What can possibly make any difference now?

This is the question haunting me as we spend our finite time together

Talking about weather

Talking about family

But never, never, never do we discuss power.

Do you remember when we used to talk about the Sacramento Kings?

Remember when that was ok?

The players didn’t used to make you so furious

That was before they said Black Lives Matter

And I laugh at you but the joke’s on me

I must see you in the context of your times

You were a teenager when America dropped the Bombs

Ronald Reagan Republican

Practical Catholic

Still you showed your faith

Out on your porches

As god-fire torched the world

Spewing poison into winds wrapping the Earth like a hug

You used to watch those flowers blooming in the sky

Out there on your desert perch

Holding your breath

Fearlessly anticipating the glow

And that’s why I am sure

I am certain you secretly wonder about basketball