There’s a shop down the street
Where you can buy consciences
Gentle pin pricks around your heart
For when you want to sense something 
For when you want to feel 
A tiny paper cut, a delicate weal
Most times you buy a numbness though 
Cloaked in velvety greys and yellows 
They’re tailor-made to fit around 
Your never-racing, constant heart 
And your ever-racing, chasing mind
The greater you can muster 
Put down on the counter 
The finer the swaddle
To enshroud your qualms
To feel the vaguest of twinges 
Of right and wrong
When to see and when to be 
Sightless, without sound 
Unconscious, uncurious, asleep
In the thick, creamy fabric
Numbingly, comfortingly bound
Gut-driven compass buried deep
Six feet below the ice and the snow
The tsunamis, the floods and the hurricanes  
The droughts, the disease, the misery
Interred in darkness, entombed underground
In the meantime there’s a shop that sells 
Custom-built, free-of-guilt scruples in town.