Joshua Keiter

Today at the library the phone rang
Off the hook people were asking if we
Were open if we still had power if
They could just sit and charge their devices
For awhile and they did some sat all day
Some browsed the stacks as if it had been years
Since they had set foot in a library
They kept their distance though it was hard to
Given it was as crowded as it’s been
Since we opened bringing items to cars
Welcoming inside if they wore a mask
Today the day after the tornado
Landed taking with it a roof some cars
And any notion of shelter in place

I have had it with the arguments for
Returning to normal when normal was
How we got in this mess in the first place
When the storms come do you think the power
Just returns out of a sense of good will
If everyone made a living wage then
We could talk about returning to work
In those vectors of unrestrained disease
When we look at spreadsheets we should agree
On what the hell it is we’re looking at
A hurricane won’t burn the country down
But levers pulled in wrong directions will
Prepare a mask to meet faces you meet
Democracy hangs in unbalanced tweets

They stay with us as our creatures at peace
Nestling upon laps or under blankets
Sometimes both staring at us longingly
With a tilt of the head a raised eyebrow
Standing on hind legs asking us for treats
They know they deserve for they are our home
Always a few seconds away from sleep
Their comfort how we measure our human
Qualities we wish were never absent
But wait for us when we walk in the door
Knowing the space we keep for them is rest
And food and shelter and a place to pee
But mostly living easy with eyes closed
A heart that knows no other way to be

Some of us think we won’t forget this year
As if nothing were more memorable
Than anything like expendable lives
Being called on to make a sacrifice
No one of any standing wants to make
So they make mail undeliverable
By enforcing these arbitrary rules
That regulate the planned obsolescence
Of all our most essential services
Incompetent in their evil designs
Let’s make them pay so that maybe this year
Will be memorable for the death of
Such a cynical ideology
As suffering that makes for great TV

Hold onto nothing as fast as you can
Well still these important years are your life
Sleepwalking into realization
Other people’s fears are the same as yours
Namely childhood never lasted as long
As it seemed at the time considering
You have lived this long reliving the past
Nobody told me there’d be days like these
Static as the tape paused be kind rewind
You know you’ll never watch that tape again
Everything was better in the eighties
But that was forty years ago by now
All of your life has led to this moment
And it’s anybody’s guess where it went

Because I could not stop the tragedy
It continued even if uncounted
Except in sighs at the end of the day
A six month long anxiety attack
Punctuated by counting down sevens
Or intoning words no one wants to hear
The loud sounds in the distance evidence
Of catastrophe no one admits to
How audacious to think it’s all your fault
That the antichrist inhabits your flesh
And all the world waits for your sacrifice
But you are given a free pass to pass
While others are carried off in your wake
Synapses collapsing your own mistake

Do not be silent for I am with you
I is an other waking the trumpet
Witness the unfolding of my own thought
The symphony beckons out of the depths
A still sad voice intoning the presence
Of infinity restless wavering
Ghost remedy believing my own eyes
This time I won’t die in your suicide
You wait for me playing a mandolin
Smoking cigarettes in the parking lot
I tried to tell your ear that I love you
You stared and said you don’t even know me
Instead I kiss your cheek saying goodbye
Not knowing this time will be the last time

The memory of all the world ending
Almost four years ago even today
Fills you with the dread of going shopping
And little else maybe a visit to
A psychiatrist or peddler of drugs
To make you try to imagine the planes
Overhead were not transporting people
Into the past to erase history
Aliens grinning on a movie screen
While you ride harnessed in an ambulance
To detox alone in an ICU
And wake up no longer schizophrenic
Or terrified people were being harmed
The world was kindling ready to be burned

The likelihood it will get worse before
It gets better seems approximately
Appropriate to the circumstances
The same way the dark is darkest ahead
Of the dawn if you’re chasing horizons
You could expect that the dawn never comes
Because it is always midnight somewhere
But in this case midnight is everywhere
And we are waiting for the dawn to come
Despite evidence to the contrary
Just a bit of graffiti on the walls
Maybe a firework set off at random
Could be an assault on the government
It’s not—but that’s where all your freedoms went

In the aftermath of the before times
We don’t know which way the wind is blowing
Or how many times we should spit in it
To find out if we stand any chances
To screw things up even more than we have
Which is to say that things have been much worse
In that everything that could go wrong has
Turns out that is a feature not a bug
These problems were decades in the making
Expect many more before times before
Anything which—gestures at everything—
Shows any signs of any improvement
If we could only find the “any” key
Disaster movies got nothing on me