Literature
On Trying to Raise Awareness
I have tried raising awareness
and the teenager seated mandatorily
across from me listens with a lisp,
earbuds laced in one ear and out the other.
I want to shout it at his acne-cratered face,
lung cancer kills
but lung cancer is just another illness,
it is just another awareness campaign,
another type of cancer; who gets that anyway?
Don’t be that young man, stoic-issued
and party-stoked; naked-in-his-dreams
and uneventfully clothed during the day.