At some point they will push the button.
God will demand it. Or some billionaire.
Same difference.
At the faculty meeting one of my coworkers told everyone a crazy story:
They're putting kitty litter in classrooms for the furry students.
The weather is pleasant.
It's December 28 in the northern hemisphere.
"It's horrifyingly nice outside," I comment.
Mom and Dad say they've planted some trees.
"You do what you can," they shrug.
Soon the army will be securing access to water.
I don't know what narratives my parents are absorbing.
They don't watch Fox and think they aren't brainwashed,
but they're usually angry at Kim Jong Un
I want them to be angry at people with power.
They've never asked me,
but I sometimes wonder if I'll find litter in my classroom
after the next school shooting
So I can help keep things clean.
It feels like the world is ending.
The way it was supposed to in 1999.
Evangelicals want to instigate Armageddon.
Everyone's waiting
Thinking they'll come out on top.
Ideology
Cymothoa Exigua
The fish’s tongue,
Its vessels severed,
Rots and falls away
And Cymothoa exigua
Grafts itself in place.
It wriggles one way
Taking note
It wobbles up and down
It makes a dance that seems like speech
And becomes its master’s sound
And when the school of fish consumes
Exigua-serving lies
They can see the world’s truth
With Cymothoa eyes
Errata 003 (The Guillotine)
Every textbook read
Teaches us to take pride in your graft
Live for you and we can eat
And hope a few survive as children
They'll endure by tooth and claw
The world is yours, the anthem sings
Said bring you the bread
Clock in clock out pray to the calf
It's dishonorable to cheat
My blood becomes your billions
Your bloody hands stain every vault
All is yours but we have dreams
But guess what we got you instead
Don't bother dodging simple math
All for one was bare deceit
There's one of you, but we are millions
The blade is clean, and sharp, and broad
We'll only keep a headless king.
Postwar Reaction
Had the Nazis won
There’d have been a
Nationalist Atlantic Treaty Organization,
staffed by high-ranking Wehrmacht officials—
men with names like Speidel, Heusinger,
Gehlen, and Globke.
Perhaps a man named Werner
would build rockets for the Reich
under the stars and stripes.
There’d be an industry for tracing ancestry.
People might say things like:
“I’m 47% German and 33% French.” And respond:
"Aren’t you glad to know that you’re pure?”
We’d compete for purest blood,
and purest German grammar,
and German ideals—
such as Efficiency,
Individualism,
the Value of Hard Work,
and Law and Order.
The police would be held up
as heroes
and paid as such,
with bonuses for cracked skulls
and hidden lists kept confidential.
Had the Confederates won
There’d have been a white supremacist United States,
with a white language,
and white neighborhoods,
and white committees deciding
who speaks
and who dies.
They’d issue identification cards:
Eyes: blue
Hair: blonde
Blood: Hexadecaroon
Neighborhood: Birchwood Reserve
The police would stop you
if you looked like you didn’t belong.
Villains would write our textbooks,
name our schools,
tell our stories—
and we would call them heroes.