Oh, God. This again?

 
DOOMSDAY BUNKER And suddenly you’re sprinting across the lawn— didn’t know you’d have to run for your life when you woke up this morning. Oh, of course you did. There’s a really low threshold for “Doomsday,” like when there are five black youths where there should be none— TO THE GUNS! So, Junior watches for threats through the periscope rising out of the collard greens while you dash for Safe Zone B—a Glock and 100 rounds of ammo buried in a Tuperware container past the corner of the house, and Little Dolly shouts a warning from the second-floor bedroom window. When the black kid asks what you’re doing dressed in camouflage and rolling around the Exurbs, you can fill him with lead.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:02 PM

 
THE KING’S JUSTICE king unlust us bust us and disgust us the king’s fucked us (and the queen, too) answers to questions unasked services unrequested did you get that thing from the king? It’s just us lying requestless full of unwant and unwanted.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:05 PM

 
WE HAVE 200 CHURCHES It’s all downhill, literally, as I leave the office with golden arches in the rearview above Steak and Shake and TGIF. Thank God it’s Friday, sky pillowed with cumulous clouds. It will rain tomorrow. I need to mow the lawn this evening, then, as I’m reminded, passing the Home Depot sign, now in the rearview, too. PJ Harvey sings “Kamikaze” and there’s the Chick-fil-A on the left. I’m boycotting, as they’re too small to crash a plane into. (Kidding.) And now the place that mostly fixes my car, my daughter’s TaeKwonDo academy, chain Italian across from local seafood, then quasi-retail Goodwills (two of them . . . I think one is a bookstore . . . kind-of boycotting them, too.) Like Anne Boyer, I’m pretty sure something-something-something . . . revolution. I think about dark money, our worship, the churches of capital with billboards on high, rising above the trees—Wendy’s, Lowe’s, climate-controlled storage—and I’m finally at the loop. Polly Jean sings, “This is Love” and it’s just newer infrastructure—paved-over forest and a bridge through lowland marsh—palmettos peeking over the cement barrier separating us from Mother Nature or a careless fate. I’m losing faith with no more signs to point the way. Anne Boyer writes, The Cartesian problem was how to monetize the abyss. I’m sure I’ll think of something while driving down this brief stretch of road, half-canopied with Spanish moss.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:40 PM

 
RIGOROUS WITHOLDING

There are cascades of water spinning away from your body,
a splendid, rainbowed truth

in concert with brightly lit, red-orange,
fragmented trivia, assembled and tightly aligned.

The cherished saferoom mountain prize
whispers, This is forever, an eternal residence.

Your breaths have quickened,
and you must be weary, your black legs

razor straight—impromptu
stiffness below navel like a wide-awake eye

as sheets are pulled over them. Nearby,
the streetlights hum their nightly welcome.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:16 PM

 
CROWD SOURCED

The earth will not sing us a lullaby
while we wait for our death
but pray for better.

God will not hear us
and, like the honey badger,
the sun doesn’t give a shit.

Perhaps the earth is praying, too,
for an unfortunate but well-placed asteroid—
celestial Frontline®,
planetary Revolution™.

If we have a problem that needs solving,
perhaps we can put the word out and receive
ten thousand solutions,
all of them: self-extinction.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:05 PM

 
ESCAPE ARTIST 2

All escapes are the same, but none are alike.
When I left, I stole your daughter
and her diorama of the swanky void.

She has no idea that foreign money is fueling household debt,
but she knows a beautiful emptiness.
It’s how we escape justice.

The headlines read,
Man Commits Crime to Escape Nagging Wife, and
Bank Robbers Drop Loot During Escape, and
Money Laundering and the Proceeds of Crime.
One asks, Are there Nazi War Criminals Still at Large?
Another offers, How to Deal with Being in Prison:
Step-by-Step Instructions.

Employees said a man entered the store
and demanded one billion dollars in customer funds.
He reportedly said, Money is the key to escaping abuse.

Being an escapist did not pull in the money
I’d hoped for.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:29 PM

 
BADASS PYRAMID POD

Dearest Discovery Channel,

You have all the integrity of a pissed-on toilet seat.
Extended doomsday-shelter infomercials as programming?
Let me offer a counter-argument
because I have seen futility
and it’s shaped like a pyramid.

You’ve discovered crazy—
"preppers" with an eye toward End Times
and tens of thousands of dollars to spend
on booby-trapped cargo containers buried in the earth,
or flame-resistant tee-pees made of steel and paranoia.

You see, the bad guys—
wandering Muslim extremists, zombies,
or welfare-hoarding sex workers—
are not going to attack you with falling cars and,
after the fire, they can wait you out.
They have nowhere better to be,
nowhere else to go.

I have seen your badass pyramid pod,
and it’s shaped like the greatest nation on Earth
burrowing underground.
shaken and poured by Scott-san at 11:15 PM