Living in a time where life is threatened at every moment
Where we have a doomsday clock
Telling us when all existence will end
The Climate Emergency
Nuclear Proliferation
A great pandemic

No wonder we have so many people on drugs
Self-medicating
The neo-liberal model of economics has left us no alternative
It is an economy based on a loss of meaning
A loss of meaning for our culture
Here in the United States

Here in the United States
And around the world
We have been alienated from nature
We have been alienated from others
We have been alienated from our work
And worst of all
We have been alienated from ourselves
This way of being
The consumer way of being
Holds no real purpose

Why do you think we have mass shootings
This general feeling of nihilism has its consequences
The young see it
They feel it coming
What is happening now
Only proves their convictions to life

So what the **** do we do
I say
We fight like hell
We fight by not giving in
By seeing that neighbor as a friend
Not an enemy
You see those people suffering on the tv screen
Not as those people
But our people

**** the rich
Until we
The working class
The middle class
The poor and forgotten class
Share one unifying idea
We are forever doomed

If we don’t wake up and realize the waters been heated up
And it’s getting ready to boil
Many more people will suffer
while all the gazillionaires
Holed up in their cozy little bunkers
Watch all of us perish
Like smoke in the wind
Snuggled up to their television screen

I’ve gone beyond
Introverts
Extroverts
By nature I’m an extrovert
But I’m a drug induced introvert
So, because time mends all things
I am what’s ******* out by the prolonged experience of these two ways of being

Coming out of the ******* and hear - Oh there’s Bronson, ****
And I say, what ****
I laugh it off and pat the person on the back
My buddy says you can’t touch people because of the coronavirus
I laugh and touch the next teacher on the shoulder

This exchange shows the goings on of our workplace
Hell, it shows the goings on of every workplace
He’s talking about her
She’s talking about him
She wants he
He wants she
And on and on
It’s all *******
But funny *******, nonetheless

It makes things interesting
If you have thick skin
If not that little ego will get worn away
Like something being chewed over and over again
Until all you have left is this mangled old thing
And the only thing to do at that point is spit it out
Or swallow it

Surrounding myself with greatness
Maybe they’ll shed a little of greatness on me

Miles
Sarte
McCarthy

I feel like I hang with you cats
When I’m alone in my room

Camus
Wright
Hedges

Some say they stand on the shoulders of giants
I stand on the shoulders of gods

Watts
Hesse
Jung

These people have shaped the way I think
The way I hold my pen
The way I speak when spoken to

X
Marquez
Plato

They are the fathers I never met
The love I always receive
I am them
As they are me
And so
I weep to weep
And reach for a pen
Or key

I’m reading the Plague
I have been reading it for sometime now
right at the start of this whole Corona virus catastrophe
So many similarities between the story and now
Politicians who don’t want to tell the truth
Incompetent people in power
The constant fear of the plague
Or in our case a pandemic

On the cover of this book there is an eye
A human eye
Staring back at me
The Plague by Albert Camus
It might be Camus’s eye
Against a red background
It gives off the feeling of having the plague

I hope I don’t catch this virus
I just don’t want to go through all the *******
Going to the hospital
Having strangers look after you
Looking into your private life
I hate that ****
Plus dying would ****
I have kids to see grow up
Yeah, I gotta do that
The father thing
The father experience
But if I can’t
If I do succumb to this killer of lungs
I will do my best to have an honorable death
Hell, I’ll be scared shitless
**** I don’t want to get this thing
I still have a whole lot of life left in me
I just hope this itch in my throat is a head cold
Not the Plague

I haven’t had contact with anyone
Other than my family
For ten days
When I meet neighbors on walks
I always make sure they’re at least across the street

Sure I do yoga
I lift weights
Meditate
And now I’m starting to run again
Have to keep a routine

I’m scheduled back to work until May 1
I doubt they will send us back to work
Back to school to work with some of worst harbingers of disease
Teenagers
Yeah, the governor is not going to put people in danger
Threatening a second outbreak of this virus
No, newsome has stepped up
More so than the idiot in the White House

I don’t care what all the rightwingers say
He helped create this catastrophe with his ignorance
His arrogance
His narcissism
His regard for only himself

When a truly rational person discerns the facts
Really looking at what could have been done before this
Trump is responsible for all of it
for not getting things done sooner
His cult of personality could have got all these people ready
If he would have just said it’s a big deal
If he just would have just let the scientists
Doctors
Specialists of disease and control
Do their ******* job we all wouldn’t be under lock down
Waiting for some invisible enemy to come to **** us

It’s getting serious
We’re all ordered to stay in place
Not to go out
Over half the population of California could be infected in 8 weeks
I hope none of us in this house gets it
I want us to see this thing from a distant
As a spectator a sport
Watching this horrific moment in time pass us
Unscathed

I want that for my family
But you never know what the future will hold
The most minute detail can change the course of an entire life

I don’t want to go outside
I’m scared to
What if I get it
I’m not like these youngsters that go about like everythings fine
Seems like that there’s just a disconnect of some kind

My daughter
My daughter fly’s to Washington D.C. to visit her boyfriend
In the midst of a pandemic
She takes a flight
A flight where there are other people
A whole airport with all these people
What the hell was she thinking
She wasn’t
She’s not supposed to
She’s twenty years old

Hunker in place
That’s what I’m going to do
As supplies last
We have enough food for about a month
Got five pounds of flour today
Another ten pounds coming tomorrow
Dropped off by friends brave enough to venture out
Risk themselves for the rest
As soon as I received the groceries I walked straight to the bathroom and washed my hands

The worst is yet to come
I’m hoping it doesn’t hit Bakersfield too hard
I don’t think it will
We don’t have a major airport
No major port from sea
Our city is kind of isolated from the rest of California
Conserative
Republican leaning
The tail end of the Bible Belt

What I saw once as a vice
I now see as a benefit
Out here in the San Joaquin Valley
Our rural and isolated ways
Ways which we were criticized by real city folk
Los Angeles
San Diego
San Francisco
These ways could help keep us alive