Saturday, February 5th - "Disasterology"

Tell me all about the time

when you ran into the burning building and

pulled the charred bodies out before they

turned into ashes to feed the pigs.  Tell about how

it was sunny, and clear, and the sky

smelled of pungent train wrecks for miles around, and the sky

ached a sad song out on its transistor radio for all to hear.  About

how it was late, and you needed to get to work, and the

roadway was on a schedule of its own, and you

pulled off to the shoulder and ran until you

turned into a phantom and forgot that you existed.  About

the blinking headlights streaming into the poorly washed

skylights, reflecting bad memories

onto the overcooked granite floors.  Statues burn

at a different rate from the rest of the world, and they

seemed to smirk and laugh and promise that

they would still be standing, after all this was done.  And tell me about

how you didn’t manage to save any lives, and you

weren’t a hero, and you went home disgraced and

melted your Vietnam war medals into scrap metal for the car, and I

tried to console you by kissing your hand and

making love in the backyard beneath the chimney.  It

always reminded you too much of burning, so you

held your nose and plunged in and

pulled out the remnants of our last cookout, sitting around the

hearth singing old Christmas songs and telling stories about the

last World War, when you pulled bodies from the lake and

brought them back to base camp to be buried, always

just a little too late.  The world is over, and you’re

still plucking dead bodies from churches and

making sure they get their last rites, because

Daddy always said God would want it this way.  Tell me that

our dreams are not in vain, and won’t

burn up and wait to be hosed down with ice water and

rubbed with perfume until they evaporate.  Tell me about the

smoke left in your eyes after you lie back and smoke a cigar, and

convince yourself that heroism is just a pretty little lie, and

sing little lullabies to the mockingbirds outside about

gardens that haven’t yet burnt to the ground.  Tell me that the

song isn’t over yet, and this is just an interlude.