NEXT

a silk spider thread

glistening

through the shadowed hedge

Looking up from a cup of tea, the day to day plainly needs reworking. There is little comfort in the news, familiar words becoming toxic.

It sets 'good morning' apart. There is always this contest, like raking over well rotted compost, through rich humus, only to discover a peach seed, hard as a rock. It grates. Teeth that will never wrestle this hideous danger involuntarily shudder.

Old words have teeth

offering an apology, unneeded really, for mundane fingers spreading unguessable flower seeds that leap, unfolding spotted butterflies. And pathways beneath trees.

Regardless

of pages justified in their

standard spellings

safe phrases

set in motion with proper sentences that are held accountable to the standard senses. There is a way of jiggering logic to forge a fit. Twitch the white rabbit's whiskers and overturn the debate. It's time hallowed and to boot, the filigreed frame of ages: Subject. Predicate. Throw in corn bread and gravy for some of that good ole down home flavor.

climate, on the other hand

is soil

is Change shortchanged

is the Lawrence Expressway

the arrhythmic

people packed

squirming four-wheeled

air conditioned offices working illegally

with canned beans

a pillow

and rage

it's pandemic

I do not conjure an alternate horror, seeking banishment of mass imaginations.  I conjure nothing and the shadow play disappears, leaving an immensity of stages, some of which I inhabit for a time, all of which I subsume.

mass shootings

home grown killers

militias, banners, patches, any excuse, any cause

Rebel Without A Cause

civilization has failed

the rivers

forests of blood, raped

mountains, lotto tickets, city yahoos

graffiti beaches

the overall disaster is a matter

of mass unconcern

throw in a genocide or two

civilians bombed are more gently chewed

schools of ignorance are funded by statutory theft

righteous causes

apocalyptic wine

screams of the disavowed are no concern

of pilots

above the fray

but as I have said from day one

the ordinary uses just won't do

screw

the unconcern

psoriasis is her out back symptom, hair burning, smell her breath, wear a face mask, that skin was our nourishment, of her mountains tears we drink and yet the call for more and more, the crushing burden as finally she collapses and sunset burns, rivers broil nuclear waste

and the limos go rolling along

unconcern

the unconcern

having made this scaffold

here on the ground

where the plaster was mixed

and the wheelbarrow sluiced

at last

awareness of Self

everything is the center

of everything

and

nothing to get

nowhere to go

it's ordinary

right here