When I am to fall asleep, I tend to feel alone

as when I cannot see your face when we are

talking on the phone. 

When I am to sing, I tend to sing in tune 

with traffic as we’re trapped with drivers

with ears that expel fumes.

When I am to walk, strawmen make themselves at home.

Where icy streets have clumsy feets

refuse to let us roam. (and I dropped my phone!)

I dropped my phone?

I dropped my phone.

I dropped my phone…

I dropped my phone!

Now I do not feel abandoned, the

strawmen have had just as bad a day!

How the farmers took up scythes

and chased them all away.

Because the farmers had as much

a reason to fume as us:

the ears of corn they were to harvest

went up in smoke then fell as dust.

And when they were to sleep, they saw straight through

their lids, as bugs ate of their lashes

as would the leaves by aphids.

And when they were to sing, all they sung was blues

as gray as clouds that concealed sapphires

that could not celebrate their hues.

And when they were to walk, they cursed even the lights

of a sun that offered warmth but took the sleep 

which all men and women thought of as their right.

and when they were told they were not really alive

they strove to prove the farmers wrong,

the strawmen hopped out from their mud homes

and punctured concrete to show us they were strong.

But as humans are cruel, as creatures with hearts

that see an alive thing with flesh unlike their own,

they took fire to their clothing-skin to reveal that

under great desire was nothing like muscle and bone.

And now dropping my phone didn’t seem as great

a tragedy, as alone I felt without your face to watch

your lips develop comedy, and have me laugh, forget

that I am stuck in traffic, I realized that having not

the humanity to show emotion was not as sociopathic

as taking blades to a thing with fabricated heart.

Uncaring thing, lacking empathy, how could you 

save yourself when no one showed you sympathy?

Strawmen, I know that before the moment of

your birth, you were as flush with color as men

nearing their destined return to the earth, happy

they could bring one last thing to taste rainfall,

And when no storm came, only lightning struck

the flames that followed spread by strawmen

flammable, made of dreams and fabric luck,

the farmers drove them away. Led them here,

To cause traffic. My phone is cracked now.