Every door is a graveyard

Soft lips.
20 seconds.
The mountain in relief.


The evolving shape
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of the/\\\
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power tower's/\/\/\
two //\/\ dimensions
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in motion
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Every door is a graveyarddddddd

. At Tilden, the fights would start in the halls, in the cafeteria, until, inevitably, someone would pull a fire alarm, and we'd be out in it, in the street. Us teachers, the ones that mattered to me at least, wouldd gather near the ROTC building and laugh darkly at the violence around us, at the police with sticks, at the lesson we had planned for the day.

Assssss they filed back in, through metal detectors and back to my class, I, at first, asked students to write, to decompress the events that had occurred, that which were trraumatic and disturbing. Until I realized that normal means something diifferent to everyone.

Annnd whatif this war is not a war at all?????
ARe OUrr   weapons virtuous?

Pre-emptive Strike Haiku

What if this war we
fight is not a war? Are our
weapons virtuous?

This time change is really getting to me, am I right?

We are waiting for something like a big balloon to fly over our house and rain gadgets down, little screens to touch that glow and illuminate our dull faces, make us smile back when it is the appropriate emotion. Yes! The machines will tell us when the fear is over and when returns to the vanished state, the disappeared streets and memories and ball games, the multi-yard night games, the invisible cities now inconceivable, the red gym shoes in the dryer thumping, the snow boats overturned on the open radiator, the canisters of juice mix, the long forgotten bedroom whispers about ghosts on Sunday night.

In other news, the band is getting back together, while The Band cannot; cheese fries can be easily made in the comfort of your own home, and Frank didn't deserve it. He really didn't.

You're going to make me brown?

Those at the highest levels surround themselves with murderers, all with a languid swagger, a drawling patois.

At the table they lean back in chairs, sleeves rolled, smirking at the death on the screen.

In Search of a Paper Bag

The hallways will always get longer, lined with pictures of former supervisors and chiefs of staff, their facial hair strange and foreign to modern eyes. Linoleum echos of footsteps on hard, waxed surfaces reverberate. Cold florescence. An edifice. A monolith.

One day it will be our faces on the wall. Distant memories. Questionable fashion choices. Yet the edifice remains.

(It was the Greeks who got it right, not Shakespeare. Our tragedies are not the faults of fatal flaws. They are the inevitable results of monolithic, immovable forces of nature.)