If we could live in any tv universe,

I think it would NOT be post war Italy, where the smart women don’t have the opportunities they deserve and the bozo men are violent bozos.

Maybe the fictional universe of Mr and Mrs smith, even if we weren’t assassins and killing people, but doing advanced analytics and prospective location scouting without necessarily knowing for whom or for what purpose it was being done. And being paid exorbitant amounts and embracing the mindless hedonism of the carelessly uber-competent, unburdened by cancer or relatives or two-factor authentication.

Exile in its Meaty Exactitude

You make of me an orphan

Standing stock still in a parched desert

Within two clicks of a watering hole

At which belligerently different people

Exchange the wet gossip of war.

Whatever old red thread

Strings into my heart

And pierces through yours

Will still stay raveled when I go

Earn my keep and

Clamber over the

Bounded walls of the

Raving plague-sick city.

I won’t write in my dreams, won’t need to,

Because some day before forever comes

You’ll return to hazy fruition

And I’ll build piles of ash

Each taller than the last

And I’ll hide the best meat

Beneath lingering grievances

To throw the sullen gods off the scent

The joke will be on them

The blood will be on us

The lion and the lamb

Muttering at the city’s gates.