Walls

Look at these walls.  They’re everywhere decreed.
Inside me. Inside you. Between us too.
‘tween my neighbors and me, walls intercede.
Houses of walls, fences blocking the view.

South at the border they build chunks of walls.
Hate chunks and fear chunks materialized
Steely expressions of bigoted drawls.
Essence of lynch mobs surrealialized.

A dike is a wall.  It holds back the sea
Minds can hold walls that don’t need installing.
Billionaire dikes holding back you and me.
They mask the good; they hide the appalling.

Walls of denial, walls of despair, walls
pachydermish in the living room, bare.
Osmotic walls through which nutrition falls.
Cultural walls through which some of us stare.

Walls give us some comfort. Walls of our fate.
Seductive devices—walls in festoons—
desensitized youth—it may be too late—
living dead in electronic cocoons.