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 Jun 2018 Busbar Dancer
Beaux
If I die in a school shooting
I'll never go home again.
My room will sit unused,
A capsule frozen in time,
A snapshot of how I was.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my dog again.
She will sit at the front door
Waiting for me and wondering,
Why I never came home.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never graduate from high school.
My yearbooks will sit stacked
Stopped short of their goal,
Missing years that should have been.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my mom again.
She will sit distraught,
Planning a funeral
For a child taken from her.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my friends again.
They'll sit together, missing me.
One empty seat among them,
A constant reminder of their loss.

If I die in a school shooting
I'll never see my little sister again.
She will sit through high school
Knowing I can't guide her through,
That she has to figure it out alone.

If I die in a school shooting
My school will be stained.
Pools of students lives will sit,
Blood tattoos on the brick structures,
Marks of death ground into it.

If I die in a school shooting
Everyone will wear black.
They'll send their thoughts and prayers
To a town marred by death,
Forever to be the home of a shooting.

If I die in a school shooting
Will the world change?
Or will I become one of hundreds  
Of kids who have to die?
What will it take?

If things continue this way
Children will have to live in fear.
They'll look over their shoulders
Always worried and wondering,
If they'll die in a school shooting.
The state of Florida is now home to the two most deadly mass shootings in American history. Pulse Nightclub was attacked in my city, I have friends who attend Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland. My little sister often fears going to school. I'm afraid to graduate and leave her. I want to be able to protect her if something happens. I hate that we have a reason to be afraid... That it's reasonable to have these fears. I hate it so f*cking much.
my favorite movie star is                        Ginger Rogers;
            is my favorite movie star      
                          she's so hot, that        as                        soon as the movies starts
I get a *****                     \ & I'm watching                        a girl whose  
                heyda                      y was 1935;                       a   golden age              movie                                    star from the
golden                       age who                                        could ballroom dance
   Republican                      flashing silver                                 ******* & long white                                        legs                ­                                        Rogers                   ­       
or     Ginger                          secretary-working girl,                    mending her
stockings on a          stilettos &                        stockings u can always
           see her crotch & she knows it,              it's her center of gravity;    gravitational charm                      sexier than Ruby Keeler                Saturday night
 Jun 2018 Busbar Dancer
Victoria
My body feels like bricks
Heavy, they give in
I try to get up
But it's so comfy, it's like a sin  

Leave me
Let me be
Turn me into a pile of stones
Not the fine kind of sand
But the ones that fill the ocean and land

Right now silence is comfort
It's both peaceful and nice
Let me be a pile of bricks
Travel to my paradise
Alone time matters too
This is dedicated to whomever (“’whom,’ he said, for he had been to night school.”)  mentioned existential angst the other day. At first I misread “existential angst” as “existential ants,” and so for you and for all who suffer existential angst and existential ants:

                                                  Existential Ants

All creepy ants are existential ants
If ants across your old blue jeans advance
And bite into your tender skin by chance
You leap into an existential dance

And swear profane, wild, existential chants
Your good companions look at you askance
Each with a wondering existential glance
They seem to be in an existential trance

As you flail among the flowering plants
Because of those wicked existential ants!
The more I think about it, maybe the world is black & white.
People like to talk about ethical or moral grays. We romanticize the grays. It's in the theater. It's on Hulu. It's in advertising. It's carried in on radio waves. There's no escaping the idea that the purposefully vague person, the all too open mind, is the mind for which we strive.

It's my thought that all this focus on the subjective experience by the collective whole has desynchronized us from our base understanding of "right" and "wrong" as it applies to the entire human experience. Excuse me for saying so, but isn't the wanton use of subjective justice exactly how we've arrived at this point of contention? And it's no accident.

They, as in those in positions of ultimate power, who guard the same systems which govern our rules, guide our perception of reality, and drive our social development patterns, fight to maintain this status quo where we've forgotten the absolute in favor of an abstract, more easily marketable humanity. Marketable, hell, palatable is more like it. The fast and righteous adherence to the exponential goodness of humankind is a hard sell. And what is good? What is goodness? Goodliness?

It's nothing religious, but everything holy about our time on a blessed earth as creatures of no meager consciousness. It's the ability to understand and apply unwavering protection to the weak and destitute, and the wisdom to serve justice upon those who would create and maintain a kingdom of opulence in towers above their impoverished, above their uneducated, above their addicted, above their abused, above their loyal peasantry.

The more I think about it, the more I understand why objectivity has fallen out of fashion. Political parties and the grassroots movements that support their platforms are fighting and infighting within the confines of an obsolete construction. It's up to us. The youth. The movers and shakers.

Those of us who have the mobility, the determination, the means, and the conviction to make goodness work. Those of us able to stand up off the couch and volunteer in the community. The more I think about it, the more I'd rather play Overwatch.
I could have sworn there was a time when Alex Jones didn't believe in subterranean lizard people.
Living in Sweden, as I do, I’ve often noticed that some idioms seem to capture an essence, are more powerful in Swedish than in my own tongue English and vice versa. Therefore, I’ve begun to take the liberty of borrowing the occasional Swedish idiom for use in my poetry.

I  Grund Och Botten (är vi lika)*
A Swedish idiom meaning At The Bottom Of Things (we are alike)

At the bottom of things: basically,
First and foremost and primarily
We are alike.
Our temperament, our gifts, our faults
May differ, and they do.
But you,
You are the same as me.
I is always you is we!
We are a race: a human race.
But should we race, erase the commonality
That binds us all? Of course not!
We are one in essence, which we got
At birth, perhaps before;
Sympathy, empathy, the virtues, vices;
All the aims a blend of spices
From self-sacrifice to merchandise;
Imprecise, but there at bottom
From the ******* to the sputum.
All your systems are but symptoms.
At their end a blend of like-ness and uniqueness,
And one race.

I Grund Och Botten 5.31.2018 Swedish Book; Nature Of & In Reality; Circling Round Reality; I Is Always You Is We; Arlene Nover Corwin
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