Before the Cataclysm

They say when god closes a door  the shooter will fire through the door’s  windows.   "The girl calls again and watches the door and covers herself in her dead friend’s blood and this is how the door between heaven and hell cracks open." “Uvalde Shooting Highlights Role of Doors in Security Plans” Deborah Paredez —AP News headline The teacher remembers pulling the door closed. She thought the door would lock because that door is always supposed to lock. The door failed to lock. They say when god closes a door the shooter will fire through the door’s windows. At first they said she left the door open and the shooter got through the door. She remembers she had opened the door to carry in supplies, propping the door open with a rock. But she closed the door when she heard the shooter just outside the doors. I ran back into the building. I still had the rock in the door. So—I opened the door— kicked the rock—and then locked the door. Later, they verified she had closed the do...

 

It's the final night of the January 6th hearings and the country is better for the work. But about half of the country seems to think it's not important. This effort to not hold accountable 45 and his cronies makes you wonder how Watergate ever happened. The efforts to actually make the voting machines vote differently would be a crime. But not wanting to leave office isn't really much of a crime.  Even assembling your fans and riling them up isn't really a very convincing cause of action. So, because a handful of better angels and Capitol Hill police were able to, Pence didn't hang and Pelosi wasn't attacked on national television.  The hideousness isn't illegal. So...now what? It's so bad, and hopeless, that my entire MAC (Music Appreciation Club) is holding our last summer gathering instead of watching. In fact, our meeting is the very same time as the hearings. I feel like a traitor to the committee. I feel wrong. But I also know however high my high...

Thought this poem provided interesting vague references to "our times" and employed a compelling use of language. There were interesting sentences and confabulations that make it worth reposting. Saturnine Patricia Spears Jones for Karen Taylor We cannot feel microbes in the palms of our hands or hear nanoseconds—we can see the laser slice wind. But  how it shaves beards remains mysterious. This talk of science & biologicals & viral crowns   make old mean men crawl into bowls of cotton  waiting to be plucked at some point by cadaver slaves humming Tin Pan Alley tunes.   What’s a pandemic but one more mortality wake up call. Tongue dulled by wine salted and cabbage stews happily forgotten. Buffed shoes shining, not worn. No more the perfect Windsor Knot because the definition for knot has swerved from necks to bandages. If ever we could color the subatomic particles and smash them up would they look like a Ken Tisa  Quarantine Drawing —how that...

 Just impressed with this poem's structure and thought some of the content timely and of interest, despite not being my experience. I Never Felt Comfortable in My Own Skin So I Made a New One Xan Phillips I was on a walk when I was struck by the precarity of the gender that wore me, which moved my matter, wrote books, and fell in love. as a child, I scoured  the forest for brittle cicada skins abandoned on trees. husks present differently now a pair of nylons caught in the thicket, a beak surviving its decomposing bird,  a mural of George Floyd with a purple cock spray-painted on his beryl cheek. among these discreet mutilations, I pull a line of thought through flesh  where a misled margin slept. I was uninhabitable before I snared a man for his hide. I was not unlike the skin of a drum thriving under a stamina  that made music of me before I split. you wouldn’t recognize me now if you saw me in the trees, played out, scattered to the undergrowth. I took a life...

A July 4th Screed a few weeks late Oh yes, it's really complicated here. I think there's a real will on the part of conservatives (the new US "Right Wing") to behave as if they are violent uprising vigilantes out "to save the nation" from the 56% per cent who think the nation is messy and imperfect, but generally OK. We're so comparatively well off as a nation that the conservatives see an opening with the middle-of-the-road electorate not really caring much. So they're willing to burn down the building to get the Right Wing autocracy they seek. We are having these hearings called the January 6th Hearings and the things that people are saying in those hearings is showing a well-organized conspiracy to take the country by coup on Jan. 6, 2021. It's a bit TRULY weird for America. There is no comparable feeling or organization in non-conservatives in the US. We do not have a "Left" here, so "non-conservatives" is the best name I ...