Don’t do it!

The invite read: “You should go,”

As if written just for me,

One of those things

Written deliberately vague

Easily misread when anyone

Who knows anything knows

I’d never get invited to anything

Remotely like that,

Me knowing that I’d never

Get invited to any party

That doesn’t have a noose

At the end of it,

And that a trap so transparent

As this kind is

Screams with the warning

“Don’t do it!”

When behind the scenes

This is Vietnam all over again

And that teasing voice

In the jungle hoping

To sure good guys like me

Out into the open

Where bad guys like them

Can get at us,

Or the political party

That always likes to keep

Ugly behind the scenes things

Like this wrapped up

So later they can deny

It meant what everybody

Presumed it meant

And the only one with egg

On their faces are those

Who took the meaning

Literally and fell for the trap,

In this world full of

Wishful thinking

We all wish for things

We shouldn’t have,

Or can’t have anyway,

Losing ourselves in a wish list

Of impossible dreams even

Don Quixote  could not rival

And no matter

How many windmills

We fight

We can never win

Watching the world spin

On a gust of evil wind

That must blow itself out