What Goes On

There's a great deal of suffering
to be done and if we finish early
we can go swimming, naked.
The lake's so blue it might
be fake—nobody knows

the trouble I've seen. My eyes
are leaking, the newscast's blurred
and there's the blurry kid to feed.
At times my hands grab spastically
and when I open them—nothing there. What it was

would have helped. This just in,
our elected representative
died for our sins. Just do
what you came here to do, and get it
over with, my mother said,

reading from the Times. There's no need
to make a big production.

Copyright © 2005 Scott Topper All rights reserved
from The Literary Review
Reprinted by Verse Daily® with permission