Untitled
The blasted atoms of the past spin in the organism that decays in the belly of now. Memories of coffee with my mother. I smell the cool menthol of her Salem lights. She smiles with nicotine gapped front teeth that were never altered.
They didn't do that in her day.
She is mist in the wave of offenders.
They want to talk to me.
Contact is a foreign land that fires the wrong neurons and brings up the dirty past. Each touch references their crime. We should all be wearing hazmat suits.
If only there were a blue pill to take to bring me back to 1989.
On Violence
Look at Neanderthal man.
We think we once were
driven by hunger
and cold,
learning to hunt,
then plow.
Made a world we'd never know now.
On TV actors are super
spies, vigilantes, and monsters.
Guns and knives are shiny justice, power
wielded by pretend heroes
risen from lost hopes
that break the law
to exact final vengeance
for your entertainment.
Prisoners sit and wait
for chow, nutriloaf, noodles,
and bad cabbage
(for the one-thousandth time--only 9000 left to go).
Don't believe TV
or you'll be waiting
with me.
Science teaches the long progression,
evolution of trees two feet, climate
change, and a giant asteroid crater
in Mexico. Religion teaches
we were made of dirt,
life and purpose breathed into us.
Prophets and scientists
look to the sky and ask why?
When they figure it all out
it will be tee time
inside the pearly gates
or in the mothership’s belly.
Pyramids and ancient temples
were built by real people
vastly smarter than we ever could hope to be.
And they still looked to the sky
to ask why.
There is no answer
there is only is...
HU4/Cell217
Charles M. Carico is an inmate in a facility in Virginia. He is a Gulf War veteran.