i will try to find
a hiding place in hell
where it is darker
than the dark the demons use to see
and when my stillness corrupts my thought
i will remember being a small boy
in trees and tall grass
in the sunshine where the snow fell
and made everything quiet at night

i will try to find
a hiding place in hell
where the tortured children
will never find me
and when their screams wander past my darkest corner
i will remember when i told them how they would die
so soon – that their breath would liquefy their lungs
that their hearts would seize
and though they were somber
they were not afraid

i told them
i would take up their bodies
and i would lay them down
in their hiding places
wherever they were
and i said it would be just like sleeping
far away from all of this
and as they listened they tried to smile
and they were not afraid.

and as they tried to find
words to give back to me
i told them
i didnt know
our souls had been sold
either.

i suppose it is increasingly popular among my peergroup to scrutinize the american government and all of its insidious moneydriven motives and all of its coldblooded foreign policy.

sometimes i’m as cynical.

but it just leaves me with more sick feelings right now.

perhaps it’s all in bad taste at the moment.

i only know that i am good, and that my friends and family are good and i want to make evil disappear and i want to do something to help evil disappear.

and i know that all-encompassing peace is a sweet idealistic dream that may never ever be, but i will do all i can do to live as free as we deserve.

can we understand that there is genuine anger? are we allowed to be angry? are all reasons for war or violence insidious, always for money or oil? always for boosting economies?

is there ever war that brings peace? has that ever happened?

no and yes. yes and no. isn’t there always some of both?

i saw a bumpersticker once that said that evil thrives when good people do Nothing.

am i a brainless drone of nationalism, or capitalism, if i share the opinion that something must be done?

i’ve seen so many people with so many attitudes in the last day or so, and sometimes the cynicism seems to dwarf the sympathy. and so maybe this is a reflection on a lot of the attitudes i’ve observed in my peers and coworkers.

maybe i will meditate on my logic. i will try to sort it all out.

please give blood. please call the red cross and give blood if you can.

the 7pm to 7am shift. sometimes when i put on my ripped up jeans and steel toed boots and come through the chain linked fences at sixthirty i almost feel more important than i am.

i make up lists of things to do and i clarify directions.

i’ve never been good at clarity, though.

i am in a sticky motel room in a small southern town and there are plenty of insects and black widow spiders. even sleep is a reality-based television blockbuster contest event except that i am all alone with it.

these were my disappearing orders for this week. i have disappearing orders for midoctober through christmas which makes me sick.

invisibility used to be my most prized and most respected trait.

and so come back-
muse.

and so come back-
time travellers of everyday if i could
convince you to revolt would you
pass the thought of smashing your heels
into the faces of all these clocks?
you- are the loneliest & ignorant
time travellers of all and the days
continue unfulfilled
only i- understand your plight
your minute before
your second late
your year-or-two death march

and maybe you never knew
to send your ghost back ten years

but if you did i’m all thebetter for it
and please let me treat you to the
\image of my face in that moment
let me treat you to a moment that
has never ended-

weary time-traveller i’ll bet you never
thought you could feel like this
in the present. i’ll bet you’ve never
felt like you do right now.

i guess it may have been about 3:15 today when there was this nervous guy obsessing over the gun probably stuffed into his pants. he probably had a quick heart beat as he stepped into the little tiny drugstore on main street where i used to work in high school. he had called earlier to fill a prescription and came to the counter to retrieve it.

they probably thought he looked too suspicious and the prescription was probably for controlled medication. addictive. jim my old boss probably started asking him questions and gave the nervous guy even more reasons to be nervous. but jim is a pharmacist and he does it well. he’s never seen a gun pointed at another person, probably, except for on television or in the movies and neither had anyone else in the drugstore at 3:15 today, probably, because we’re all from that small small boring quiet little town in-between buffalo and rochester and no one is outwardly deranged and if there are drug fiends no one would know and if there are guns they are rifles for hunting and in dresser drawers but not stuffed in pants on main street on a pleasant afternoon, probably, along the sidewalk and into the nice little drugstore where i used to work when i was in highschool and i still lived there.

my mom says she counted five ambulances on the police scanner and when i emailed adam about it he called sue and asked and she was surprised but as they talked on the phone an ambulance and a police car flew past her house from the next town over and then she probably gasped.

andy griffith probably wasn’t ever shot five times in the chest on duty but a young police officer who’s new to the little town where i used to live did, today and they say they’re operating on him right now in the emergency room in the little town where i used to live and my best friend’s mom works in that ER but she’s on vacation today and my best friend called his grandmother because she’s forever listening to the emergencies on the radio scanner and on the television one station says one cop shot five times and one suspect dead and another station says two cops down, suspect: who knows?

and i was thinking just give him the prescription, jim. just give it to him because he has a gun stuffed in his pants and he really wants those pills, jim. i don’t know why but he really does and if we were in an alternate universe where i was still seventeen i’d get in to work at 5:00 and start taking out the garbage and wonder at the shock frozen on everyone’s faces and i’d pick out a candy bar that was probably grazed by a bullet and go on my deliveries and take prescriptions to all of the sad old people and sometimes some happy old people and it would be no use trying to drive around all of the flashing ambulances and police cars and mercy flight helicopters when i tried to pull into the hospital because they would stock their shelves with some of our drugs sometimes but i’d have to walk right by the ER where a young police officer was dead or dying and there was a lifeless drug fiend in a bag and they both had holes in them and it would be amazing that no one else was hurt and

in a town like this if six people are in a store with a wielded gun then you probably know 3 of them before they go into shock and afterwords your mothers are calling them up asking is everything okay are you alright? and getting the whole story.

because i used to work at a little drugstore in a town where crime didn’t officially exist until today, i guess. and i hope it isn’t all because of some karmic tear i’d left there in my place before i left.

like most of the time i have to hope from farther away that everyone is alive and persevering.