Because I have common sense

 "Because I have common sense," he said,  

lips puckered like the peel of a bruised orange,  

words slipping slick, oiled with bravado,  

as if truth were just a trick of the tongue—  

a game of catch with facts, dropped,  

left to roll under the couch with yesterday’s lies.  

The sky cracked open, metal teeth gnashing,  

bodies falling like prayers unanswered.  

But no—don’t look up. Look here.  

Watch his hands—big, bigger,  

gesturing to nowhere,  

shaping air into castles of blame.  

"It wasn’t that," he insists,  

as if grief could be rewritten,  

as if equality were a suspect in a line-up,  

mugshot smudged with disbelief.  

A shrug, a smirk, the practiced squint—  

common sense, he calls it,  

like a badge pinned crooked on his chest.  

Remember the bleach, the sharpie hurricane,  

the numbers spun like roulette,  

where the wheel lands on denial every time.  

Remember the walls built from fear,  

the mirrors cracked with ego.  

But facts don’t care.  

They sit heavy, like black boxes  

buried deep in wreckage,  

waiting to be found,  

long after the noise has died.