The Life I Protect, The Life I Project, The Life I Can't Quite Reject Poem by Raj Dronamraju

Thank you for keeping me in line
For working with others who don't know they are working together
Whose faces and bodies are tied up with string
And who coordinate the pulling of this string in a kind of instinctual rhythm

Thank you for maintaining the flow of progress
Even when I am not participating in it
For keeping this going even when I am sitting this one out
Silently protesting the latest loss

Thank you for sharing these emaciated experiences with me
Starvation years of pain without glory
The gunman in review, troubled sympathy - a moral dilemma

Thank you for the meaninglessness of speech
What you'll hear is what you'll soon forget
Denial of gas based words, I wish you wouldn't take this so personally