Pretense

The poet is present. The poet
is a person just like you
and he has been writing

(in case you didn’t notice)
poems about The Fast
& the Furious, a frankly

ridiculous thing to be writing
about, which is the point,
but the most ridiculous part

of this whole enterprise
is pretending that all this
furious writing is anything

other than some bizarre
coping mechanism, escape
into chase scenes exploding

with life, blur of cars
and bullets that only mildly
inconvenience one’s heroes —

the kind of chaos that is
safely fictional. Because
here’s the truth:

things are really strange
and sad in the world, people
are sick and dying

and things are changing,
and I have always been
so scared of change.