Tormenting insurance companies.

Giant ants are breeding in the storm drain.

Soldiers tank up & down the streets:

“Go home,” they say.  “It’s for your own good.”

In school, doing what we are told

is always for our own good.

Is the subject we study best, In church,

Devout lovers of God pray

For destruction of their enemies.

But giant ants, with  formic acid on the brain,

Become mirrors to our own blunders & hold –

 For a few brief time– our attention.  We shd

Do as we are told, certainly.  Giant ants lurch 

From the drain.  They buzz & twitter.  We pray

For their destruction.  Our bloods freeze.

Our best selves freeze.  It is not even 9 A.M. &

Already our world is one lone ruin.

Louis Phillips’ recent poetry publications include The Domain of Silence, The Domain of Absence: New and Selected Poems (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2015), The Domain of Small Mercies: New & Selected Poems ], Volume 2 (Pleasure Boat Studio, 2017), How Wide the Meadow (World Audience Publishers, 2019).