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Irradiated
burnt out wasteland is what you're
truly fighting for

                                  Kelly McManus
Tech-spawned personae
Introduce themselves:
CGI Barbies walk pretty
Tik Tok talk pretty . . .
Filters falter
(Ken follows).

Powers given:
Fake likes, fake stats
Syncopated algorithms
Gas-lit shadow bans
Dead mockingbirds
Dying media
Reanimated.

<Chips implanted>

Power is given
To the beastly image:
Mainstream mediocrity
For mediocretins.
A delicate rondelay for your erudite perusal
St. George, Utah, 1953
Look out your window
What do you see?

***** Harry
And winds that mean no harm

Nice big mushroom cloud
Gonna dust your farm

ee-I-ee-I-o
During the early 1950s, St. George, Utah received a majority of the fallout that occurred at the Yucca Flats northwest of Las Vegas during the nuclear testing period of weapons development. The winds routinely carried the radiation to this area, resulting in a significant increase of cancer in the general population.
Flowers can speak
and beautiful is their language,
their voice.
You can hear them whispering
when silence falls.

But when they wither and die,
they scream
like mothers of children,
taken away from them
to be killed.
There's beauty in the latent
I will wait, I will be patient
Do you need another poem?
haven’t all my words been sown

I stitched verses together  
to  get  her
forget    her

I cannot

She is at my seams
my lungs scream

silence

I provide it
in brief moments of emptiness

I have no mistress
no muse at my disposal
just memories that act like chains upon my heart

but this is art

No! this is my heart
sprawled across the page

every page

I wage war with myself
just so I can speak

I keep nothing back
you’ve seen the white and the black
a contrast that happens so fast
I almost look complete

I could never accept defeat
not even death could steal my promises

I promised this

.
We have come to meet again after all these years
and in your eyes I see the young girl I once knew
no words are needed when two hearts are glued
to the worth of our last words
to the life that we once knew
Yes after all these years you have finally returned
to that special place where we first began, as two.
We invent the words,
Unless or until we tired,
And then we're yearning for kisses.
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