You’d bury a metaphor

There is no use speaking in tongues this year.
You’ve read the papers, scraped your lungs clean
enough of black mould and microplastics and
bushfire smoke to laugh in spite of them, to claim
dark comedy against a killing machine that never
fucked you in the first place. But it’s hard,
isn’t it? You need to cope; you have a conscience.
Never mind it being buried in that same mass
grave you scroll past, never mind that there is
no god that can stop this, that violent starts have
violent ends. That we were given hands to hold
hot truths. What gives? Will you feed the children
dinner? Cry in your bathtub with a bottle of fizz?
Will you eat the bees into extinction, just to taste
the end of sweetness? Israel commits genocide,
and we still get a sunset. There are no figs in this
poem, no oranges, no seasons. We’re all still sick
of the sickness. Make of it what you’ll make of it.