Unexplained noise jackhammers your quiet

green neighborhood at 7:15 am, you cannot

sleep because you cannot sleep,

the ground beyond your home is under siege

cement busted again and again

and again for your safety, infrastructure,

rubble piled high barring access

beyond your ramp, the sidewalk strewn

with rocky debris, ambulance crew

can’t reach you, dust rises, the stench

of tar turns your stomach.

You did not protest this incursion

though it sounds like bombs, as steel road plates

slam street holes, these are not munitions.

Though you were not asked, nor gave permission,

your peace is shorn from this quivering body of illusion

that Ukraine, Gaza, and Sudan are elsewhere

that drowned bodies, scarred by bivalves

offering purchase on a southern border seawall,

are just more operational logistics shredding lives.

On tv you see Utica police shoot the 13-year old

child of Karen refugees in the back

as he lay face down on brutal concrete,

collateral damage from a daily domestic abuse

of clarity, of understanding, as cannibal

myth is extolled to a cheering electorate

and the pounding on your door at 7:40 am.

by a gas company contractor to move

a car you do not own, frightens you out

of any sense of normalcy, scares you,

awake again to the loss of reason

or forethought or kindness.