Spit It Out

I want this taste out of my mouth.
I wake up with it.
The news makes it worse.
It tastes like dust and cinders.
I can spit and rinse,
spit and rinse,
3x day, 
after cheap meals
bought on my (now missing) 
SNAP benefit
but I can’t free my tongue
from the particulates.
It flavors everything-
dry bitter vile.
I can brush my teeth
rinse and spit the mint froth,
until it is laced with red,
but it lingers on my palate.
I can scrape my tongue 
with stainless steel arcs
until it drips red 
onto the porcelain,
sluices down the drain,
pink-edged red ribbons in thick saliva,
but the taste of sick remains-
I cannot wash
this taste perversion
from my mouth,
the ever-toxic words
The world is poisoned.
Read the headlines.
Avoid armchair commentators,
with their one-minutes of hate
and insanity crashing out
all around like artillery shells.
Language is a virus 
and we’ve still not learned
to cover mouths when we cough
or still wash our pathogen-filled
hands that write properly.
Rage and fear pandemics spread.
I cannot rinse and spit out 
the unchosen circumstances of my birth,
my wonky broken genes, 
my culture, my mother tongue,
my expired passport
and the infernal infection of hope.
I can only fear death.
Blooming like algae,
History merely repeats,
learns new dumb tricks.
Rinse and spit.