When stories
of scars told
in one town,
become this legend
in the next, retold to grow
on, even as we listen and find it told
a better way,

So  long ago we know,
so long now,
nobody knows,
stories be told to comfort,
none should be used to frighten,
or terrorize in the darkness, true,
holy terror
first we can recall, or was that
in a movie?

Maybe Fantasia, when you were three.

When was a way
to make a tie
to an instant
to which our social entities loosely anchor,
global Disneyification, animating old devils,
using Voltaire's rule
for adult conversations,
define the terms, regarding evil for good,
about Nuclear War,
at the final judgement of us all,
my side submits the work
of Annie Jacobsen, and offers the next 72 minutes
to a journey
a parsa, in contemplation

at least that long,
through a story
thought after knowing
a minute's worth
of ever after,

once one is old enough,

the trouble one causes,
when one dies, shan't change history,

the kids could make it from here.


A parsa is a distance walkable in 72 minutes.

72 minutes is how long it takes
for human influence
on the future
to be unthinkable,
for 30 thousand years…
after the first launch
of a nuke from anywhere, really.

No nation ever wins nuclear war.