when you first held me in your arms

singing a lullaby in that sing-songy voice g-d programs for us

To have around babies

You must’ve wanted to tell me

That a part of you would be around no matter what


today i watched people throw rocks in a fire

Through a screen

To honor a dead comrade of their kinda nomadic group

And someone in the film said he would always see people again

A day

A month

A thousand years

even those that went to [       ]

He’d see their van charging up the road

Modern pioneers because our society only cares for the temporal


One day i will see an elderly man in a golf tee

Associations primed for years will kick in

“POP”! I’ll scream, wanting to hug

Reunite, catchup (we got a lot to go through)

Turns in a confusion i’ve never seen

And then the hurt will come back


In conclusion, one day i’ll see you at pebble beach

Trying to hit a hole in one.


Love you big.

one minute im on the outer banks

Cavorting among minute grains of sand while yelling “Harris Cheater” at my sister

For bumping into her at the racetrack

The next moment, like a page turned in a book

Im at the train, surrounded by throngs

In assorted clothing

Some look like historical reenactor a

Others like your local airplane traveler

we’re all going to 1865 for some nebulous mission

Something about stopping some actor from jumping off the balcony

There’s some foreshadowing of the world that is to come through some poetry book whose author’s name is at the tip of my tongue

Something mcsomething

Some thought comes to me that i probably know it from an anna burns novel

The next moment, i’m seeing a children's book about strippers that was too raunchy for PEN

Femmes cavorting around poles, throwing their limbs like a potter throwing clay

Some even kiss and grind upon each other, whether for the customers or themselves is hard to tell

i walk the middle path and say a “that’s cool” to an artist who went to an upper echelon art school and has to use their passion to be sold into the paradoxical nightmare that is capitalism

With few alternatives and even fewer choices: work or die

Maybe there were uniforms in my vision

Maybe there weren’t

But there were chants and speeches on this selfsame subject

And the next my thoughts swirl around

Is it burnout? Coffee? Autism? Anxiety? A headache?

I’m stuck in this hurricane of worry without a webmd article to doom scroll

The world may end in nuclear devastation with pockmarks of human activity

Or a paradise where everyone can choose to work without the braiding of whips,

Could it be

Even possible for such a world to exist?