Among the strata of rubble, a faint, pulsing blue light. Digging to identify the source. A monitor is extracted. They shake it, wipe it with a rag. Repeating on the screen, an image of someone from Their Time, the time of the Loco Eagles. In a scene with a house and a lawn, some words can be heard. "Now." "Didn't you?" The person saying the words moves with poise, grace even. Her blue and white clothes: water and light. She leans out the doorway of a white bus. Beatific smile. The pair thinks, They were not all killers. "Flow." Did one of the others call her “Flow?” Movement, grace, hope among desolation: Flo. God (who is absent) is not against us, the pair thinks.
I
I am 55 years old, and since graduating from a Jesuit high school in 1985, untangling, understanding and, very often, undoing the Catholic theology into which I was submerged - quite literally - since my baptism as an infant, has been an ongoing project. While I gained some valuable perspectives from the thoughts of the Nazarene scholar of Jewish sacred texts, mystic, and cultish leader from 2000 years ago whom we refer to as "Jesus Christ," the psychological damage I suffered through my repeated exposure as a child to the lurid torture sequence of the "passion" and the nails-through-hands-and-feet-die-in-the-unceasing-Palestine-sun human crucifixion and - just as importantly - my exposure to the the stories I was told to contextualize JC's torture & murder by the Roman state was and is profound.
Saying "uncle" after thirty-five years of wage labor. The sky is a red sound you can't forget. Across the horizon, whales go crazy hearing nuclear subs perform their sonic tests. The 1960s were a possibility that was assassinated person-by-person. A woman in a polka dot dress runs through The Ambassador Hotel yelling, "We killed him! We killed Bobby Kennedy!" We were born into landscapes made by people indifferent to us. We're not meant to know of them. I'll never pick a flower or strum a guitar for Ronald Reagan, even though he projected himself across the sky of my youth like a mayonnaise packet splattering across acres of white bread. I'll never write a love poem to Oliver North, even though he was a knight sent to deliver a dead dream onto the cold front porch of my youth. I'll never drive a Winnebago onto George Bush's Jr's ranch, even though he lit up the planet like a century of torches tossed into a forest.
This orchestra is playing in the future
always in the future
They are lonely, distant from us
The instruments they play will never be invented
Nobody attends their concerts
They play in empty, wooden halls
When they stay in hotels
there is only the solitary bellhop
The lace bed covers and
crystal pitchers of water
Who will ever hear
this orchestra from the future
Power, money, crime, deception and manipulation. Contempt for people and for the living world. Personal development stalled at age 6. Cheating and lying, cheating and lying. Such are the dubious pleasures of former President Donald John Trump. And he has walked between the raindrops for all of his life. From arch-villain Roy Cohn, he learned to strike first and always deny, to never apologize and never repent. Act more jaded and cynical than the next guy. Respect nobody. Of kindness, exercise only the artificial variety. Disdain for those who follow him and for those who oppose him. He runs his affairs as a series of crimes that can be plausibly denied. Leave no paper trail – flush the evidence, eat the documents, shit them out later. No cell phone messages, not even an email account. Threats spoken but never recorded. People are gullible, weak -- this belief forms the cornerstone of his faith. But mafia dons don't become presidents -- it's too risky, too much exposure and potential accountability. Donald could not resist: No amount of power is ever enough. Roy Cohn was not around to advise Donald against doing it. And today federal agents peered into his safe and pulled back the scrim just a little bit more...
