Confidence Man

The streetlights are out tonight

And my lights are out too

But there’s a brightness in each dwelling

Bodies affixed to a screen

As I silently pedal past, Richard Buckner in my ears

Loaded at the wrong door

I can see what they’re watching

Ghosting away to the next screen-glow, I glimpse

A prisoner frogmarched towards the electric chair

As the guards fix the electrodes his mouth drops open

And a shock moves through me

I lean over the handlebars and leg it away, hard

You and I, we’re at an impasse.