This Library’s Fire Alarm

Littered alarm
Bleeps across this paved sea
Her library’s lot
This monotonous jingle
Void of humor or soul
Pure purposeless audible
Of siren’s caution

Upon the wait
While firetrucks lumber
And firemen assess
Any books a’burnin’
The winter Sunday unfolds
Graying
Freezing
Evacuees harbor heat

One football field away
Circle K commerce concedes
The echo of the same note repeating
Gas pumpers marvel
About as much as a squirrel
On alert

Spawn of sabbatical
Stuck at the car wheel awaiting
Drawn here by the magnet of lovers grief
To recede in search
For words of truth
A currency of sudden inflation
Eternity instead to compose 
Jealous observations
Suspicious wonders
Conservative steps
Cruel protections
Making an end of the jostling of aspirations
Desorb the inviolate ego

Oh that’s right
Kept away from you
You gave me an involuntary push
We don’t understand each other We don’t realize each other
Yet we tumble together
Personalized
Identical
What could be Nirvana
Me you—you—me

Vanity’s undertow
Took you down the stream
From the shore of anger
And other drift
That thoughts suspend

This lump of car is cold
The alarm is long over
Here sits trauma
That’s just begun