Poetry

“2020”

“2020 – The year my hair turned from brown to silver” Flapping, alligator skin swings from my arms and pathetic legs, and the silver hair that 2020 had unnaturally bleached, springs crazy from the diving board of my head to float to the bathroom floor. Outward signs of a poisonous year which some had survived,…

“2022”

A certain kind of insanity darkly blossoms in the U.S. at the sputtering close of Covid.

Madness, fed on two years of frustration, erupts through young men who slaughter unsuspecting adults and children.

Bullet-proof backpacks sell quickly in the “Back to School” shelves while parents shudder.

Weekly shoppers look twice for escape routes as they pass through sleepy grocery store aisles.

What secret hate metastasizes the weakened brains of youth? Is an insidious misfire responsible for the release of this new design to destroy? A moment’s notoriety?

And as the pandemic shrinks like a hurricane hitting landfall, will the vicious derangement also come to a close? Will the hate dissolve back into rare atrocities or has a newly discovered cancer taken root? Yet, “The wound remains.” (Rose Kennedy) And “only time will tell.” (anon)