A Note From Exile

I cannot go home.
Rather I cannot go where my family lives - that place ceased to be home some time ago.

I was a soldier during the Cold War and my neighbors there have become more like East German loyalists than American citizens.

They surrender their rights without question
They are eager to call out community members on social media for ‘social distancing violations’.
They use shame and ridicule to control others
They applaud the police for keeping children from playing in gigantic public parks
They trust politicians who ignore public defecation and drug use to look out for ’the public good'
They allow themselves to be labeled ‘essential’ and ’non-essential’
They carry ’traveling papers’ in the event that they are stopped by the police
They propagate the most inflammatory statistics without ever validating their veracity.
Because…
They heard it on CNN.

So I will remain 1098 miles away
Zooming
Skyping
Facetiming
Until the contagion subsides

And then I’ll return
To a completely different world.

You would find this donut
only at the day-old bakery
on the depressed side of town
On the bottom shelf
in the back

It’s unevenly frosted
With sprinkles tossed haphazardly around
It is neither appetizing nor revolting
It’s…
Confusing

It’s inviting and bitter

distasteful and captivating

complex and mundane



Moment to moment
Bite to bite

You can’t decide

Whether to try again

Or discard it forever

It's glazed,
That's it.
With coffee -
Black

Thirty Four Years Ago

Today…

I scrambled from the back of a 5-ton Army truck and landed in a different universe

Before me stood men
Whose disdain for my existence was visceral

Though I had excelled in all of the tests required to arrive at this place – none of it mattered.

I hadn’t proven my worth to THEM.

And… until I did

I was nothing

Welcome to Day Zero

Silence is corrosive.
If thoughts remain inside
they burn their way to very dark places
and start to consume my soul
I have to get them out...
Or I will lose myself to them

“Sweet Dreams,”
Mom would say
when she sent me to bed

But…


My dreams have never been sweet

In the sleeping otherworld
I am despised reviled hated pursued maligned chastised excoriated mocked and scorned
I am lost abandoned confused terrified and helpless
Even familiar places and comforting faces
Become hideous antimatter versions of themselves

No, Mom, there are no sweet dreams for me
There never have been
I just never told you.

Early on Sunday mornings
Uncle Matthew clattered about downstairs;
hours before the sun was scheduled to rise.

After a while,
the warm smells of morning
wafted their way around the spacious farmhouse;
Fresh coffee
Bacon cut thick
so that it didn’t shrivel up to nothing in the pan,
and most special of all,
his honey bread.

We were convinced that God himself gave Uncle Matthew that recipe
as it was the closest thing to Manna that any one of us had ever tasted.