Tuesday, August 31, 2021
A Man Walks into a Store
Wednesday, August 25, 2021
The Politics of Cuelty
He felt as if he couldn’t escape the politics of cruelty. It was like a vast, urine-soaked sheet draped across the continent.
Friday, August 20, 2021
patriot [ pey-tree-uht ] noun
in American speech
1 a person dedicated to the maintenance of the hyper-individualist, white supremacist, misogynist, hyper-materialistic, ecology-hating, self-pitying and maudlin traditional American order.
Thursday, August 19, 2021
The Virus and the Unreal
No vaccines. No masks. No business closures or regulations. Nothing. Just let 'er rip because... it is not real. The acute pain, the gasping for air and dying alone in plastic tents, the weight of a grand piano on the chest in the testimony of hundreds of thousands, the other ER cases who cannot get a bed, the medical staff reduced psychologically to fumes and shards of burnout, the shattered families, the virus patients crawling back from death's door, the hundreds of thousands plundering through that door - their lungs topping out with fluid and drowning being their final experience on this mortal plain... none of it is real. Not real. Or unreal. Irreal. The only reality is what the believer asserts. Stand them in the ER of an Alabama hospital for the night shift today, August 18, 2021. Let them witness the chaos, the despair, the bewilderment, the howling pain of patients battling a hungry virus -- children, teenagers, college kids, butchers, bakers and businesswomen crushed by the thing from a bat or a lab. Let them watch the nurses and doctors and paramedics try to hold it together as they relive the exact hell they lived one year ago, almost to the day. Let the ideologue watch all of it and still they will say: IT IS NOT REAL.
Two Squirrels
Two squirrels playing up and down a tree trunk. One with an crab apple in her mouth. One always on one side and the other always on the other. Claws on bark, winding up and down the tree like a lunatic ribbon. Playing that game in the black-and-white movies where the guy on one side of the wall looks for the lady on the other, craning his neck around the edge, just in time to see the empty space left by the lady, craning her neck around the edge trying to spy him.
The Father Spends a Lifetime Trying to Understand the Son
The father spends a lifetime trying to understand the son. The son spends a lifetime trying to understand why the father does not understand the son. He looks out the window. A small red bug walks across a leaf. The son thinks he must just say to the father - I am but the stranger version of you. The you who sat at my bedside and told me adventure stories straight from your head - Bortu the Giant Squid, Andy and the Time Machine. That’s who I am.






