Folly Stamp Poem by Prageeta Sharma

Clatter into the window this late night.
We were flabbergasted, tired
of the newly-minted drunks and meth-kids
with squeals for fists.

We live downtown,
exposed to the alley.

Nothing dangerous, and we were not alarmed.
But still, every sound turns us into pins on points,

a sleep of figuring out: deeply felt turns:
wrestling little autocrats

that fly or stick—nothing more than thistles
or wasps, but a sting is always a sting.

It must be we who are having the trouble:
it's our estranged perception of thinking.

Are we actually perceiving?
Do things truly mock us?
Or do we ourselves mock?

We must find our own modernization bill,
a folly stamp that appeases us with its generous
humanizing. We can be reckless, we can overreact.

Let's not be bewildered by the graces
that sometimes leave us,
by our paunches that are not always gargantuan,
that we haven't sewn shame in to suit our false selves.

The fit of relief or deferment is near.
What we find next is important.
What would happen if our window
arranged a life for us—
something intentionally
on view.

And we looked out at the reconciliation
of the rest of the world:
Wasps and drunks and meth-kids
arm in arm in arm in arm.