I know how the bank robber felt

when he made some stupid mistake,

some one unheeded thing that could have

made all the difference

and ended the scene with a clean

getaway,

off to vacation

in a place that hates America enough

to preclude extradition.

<<>>

I know the feeling;

I know it, and it hurts.

<<>>

It’s just like the one

where I didn’t figure out

in time

that paper was a path to money,

the one where hedge funds

could have been about gardening

for all I knew

when I rose each morning to work

and visited the early sun

when it still shone on us all

with equal force —

before the top of the food chain took the lion’s share

on its way to the lambs

then began blaming the compass points

as unnumbered futures darkened —

<<>>

as light itself was bent

by the will of a new gravity

like some plutocratic black hole

with irresistible need at the heart

of its furnaces,

<<>>

and we, late to realize

that everything was being pulled

and pulled and pulled

<<>>

weirdly jealous,

wanting to be at a party, too,

to enjoy some unalloyed pinnacle of something

before the end,

<<>>

before history testifies:

These were our stars;

this was our galaxy.