Saliency

Swept under the rug of regret
are all the glossed-over particulars,
the minutiae
exchanged for the gray scale,
the broad strokes
-Please spare us the gory details.
There’s no need to go any further-
inbred and pled
are all those congenital smiles
-You keep doing it, and so will we-
and you will
and they will
keep smiling, that is,
at each other at everyone at no one
with gleaming atom bombs
never detonated,
4th of July duds that go up,
pop,
and leave only a small mist of smoke
to fall in the trees
and smolder,
a paled possibility of igniting unexpectedly,
but never doing so.
-Things like that just don’t happen here-
and just like that,
rolled up with a condescending
sweetie,
the fire burns itself out,
purposefully, remorselessly –
before a quick descent back to hell,
or rather is seen, but pretended away,
propelled by a thin swath of the superficial,
compelled to response by rote,
a waterfall of denial that
irrigates and irritates
the underside of angelic flow.
It barely trickles
beneath an easy deluge
of disguised calm,
not worth the effort to break the seal.
And so, ineptly, it’s easily faked,
covert and obvious, primarily ignored
saliency.