Week in Review - Les Bernstein

[Larry Robinson]

Week in Review

​ I
in a safe zone of generality
flush with an amalgam of cliché
mankind celebrates earthly holidays
with over-produced fumes of sentiment
and curdled complacency

​ II
this story never gets old
the whirring machinery of denial
embalmed in history
can only travel a single direction

​ III
coming into a starker relief
within the spin of the world
sleepy selves
try to navigate the familiar

​ IV
thoughts and prayers
bleat and thrum
hang long in the air
try to fill the empty

​ V
the broader mind
the fuller heart
try to construct wings
for an unhurried
vertiginous fall

​ VI
it's tempting to believe
only confusion and ambivalence
define a paralysis of will
familiar unease never hurries
this well worn terrain

​ VII
in this climate of harm ​
desirous of great forgetting
we are complicit
shivery wishful thinking
useless as flower bouquets
withering with decay

	- Les Bernstein