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Keith Seher 

Headache medicine after headache medicine
were recalled, all within two weeks.
We thought we were about to learn the name
of the secret poison we’d all suspected
must be keeping us miserable, bringing
all the new conditions and diagnoses
into prominence and our proximity.
Clearly we were fat, and our children died
from things suddenly everyone’s nephew had.
Then came earlier onsets, all these drooling
forty five-year-olds in homes, straining
the system, obliterating unemployment,
turning the unions into militias, emptying
the universities, closing Army bases
all over the world. The young led, ordered,
thin Achilles at seventeen, like our supposed
ancestors, their lives short and glorious.
But some of us, who cared to learn, knew
the myths were a warning. Not for long millennia
had humans lived much shorter lives than us.
This romance, the idea of fifteen year olds
married and fucking with tribal approval,
never happened when things went right.
The children were always fools, you have
to know that, and those who relied on them
lived just this horrible, wavered sort of life.
In every form we can conceive, sunk at sea,
in seedy rows, in busy graves, we hide the books.