The Politics of Sunglasses

The Politics of Sunglasses

I will not start with the ones
I am wearing.

Reports
of ancient Chinese judges
concealing their tells
with flattened smoked quartz or
the stylin' walrus ivory jobs worn
by early North American Inuits or
the healing blue or green lenses
for better vision or the
yellow amber waves for syphilis or
the mystique of Mr Ray Ban's
cockpit glare stoppers or
like window shades coming down,
the flips in the outfield or the
eyeless two-way mirrors on tv's CHIPS
where I thought I could comb my
hair in their smiles or the
burka-nizing of unmarked cruisers
swathed in darkness or
how now we wear our cars and trucks
like enormous wrap-arounds.

I remember a film called They Live,
where a man finds a pair of sunglasses
that reveal the true faces and
subliminal messages of aliens
disguised as the wealthy.
Messages like: "marry and reproduce"
and "submit to authority".

My glasses?
There is nothing special about them
other than their desire for relaxed eyes,
a smooth gray fog of polarization and
a reminder in the visor mirror
-perhaps just a glimpse-
of identity theft.