Simplicity Is Not An Option

Even the computer keyboard
overhears the never-ending sounds

of shouting. People
teach themselves and others

how to plant traffic cones.
Goggles wear young faces—

not swimming but rising.
They walk towards me in dreams,

on a landscape
of billowing acrid smoke.

Artificial fog everywhere:
Fog in residential areas,

fog in homes for the elderly.
Lived lives confront lives lived—

We were the same, but now
speak different dialects

of gear. In schools they don’t
teach the scenario

of running away
from being gassed.