What Would You Prefer?

Nobody sings about alligator eyes anymore,

barely peeking out of the water,

bouncing on the ground and rolling

into the pond, leucistic.

People think of traits,

symmetrical fetuses giving orders from space,

making playlists even as they’re being born.

Things have come to eyes

that gaze in directions we can’t think of.

You are told by a judge that nothing new will ever happen.

You lie to his face

looking straight into the gaps that want to appear.

Each night I count the celebrities.

The silhouette of this long stretch of time

where opportunities spark and fizzle

like islet cells quickly eaten by bosses and strangers,

nearly identical computer-generated faces,

with smiling or disgusted expressions.

It appears again, the farcical pulchritude,

hobbits of caution in non-events

first paying a visit to mitigators, then Mario,

then TIAA-CREF.

Can you escape an alligator

if you run silently and glide into the water?

People with happy faces and no luck at all, good or bad,

jam the signal with a sickle.