I want to write an
honest sentence. But even honesty goes rigid like a body on the field
of battle, one arm splayed above a broken shoulder, the other hand
clinging to mud. Two diplomats on horses meet in no-man's land to
broker a deal. It's so much easier post-apocalypse, when there's
nothing to exchange except wounded prisoners. After Cadet Bone Spurs'
latest tweets, the nuclear clock advances. We have an ammo box and
iodine, just in case. To think about death was easier when it came
more slowly, or news of it. The process is one of steeping, of
dipping tea bag in hot water and watching steam become cloud become
mundane revelation. He saw Jesus in his, while his friend found
Satan, assuring him he'd sell his soul for money. And he did. In his
Christmas letter he told us how much we'd love to be his boxers
(dogs, not shorts). One was named Buddha, and the other Daisy. The
earth of Volcano is fragile, like crockery yet not so solid, layers
of ash and rot and moss and ponds of water after rain. Earth is not
institution but it dies. Bully bulldozer takes out segments of forest
to install strip mall or suburban tract house. The hardware store
proclaims “True Value,” but there's nothing there except tourist
trinkets and monster drinks. The conspiracy is as true as you make
it, because inference is more powerful than document, and far less
dull. Better to tell the story of an FBI that undermines Hillary
Clinton only to advance her power grab over the greatest candidate in
history, or to vaunt the white supremacist as a man of the people,
where people is defined as anyone who has never crossed a border. We
push our toes to the line like servers, hopes focused on the box
before us, which we see through the net. We cannot play without the
box, we opine. I can't remember now what year Buddha died.
--25 January 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment