by Paul Marion

On a plain Wednesday,
Late in a winter that wasn’t rough,
In the city just waking up,
Slouched in a black raincoat
And tilted gray pork pie hat,
The hospital chief lifts a coffee mug
To his lips and George Washington teeth.
The diner is full of men who could be
Doctors, candlemakers, teachers, mechanics.
They burp and spread sports pages
Over toast crusts on yolk-smeared plates.
High school Girl Officers will show up later,
Four in a booth or a pair at the counter
Always open, the caboose car pulls eater:
Via the red rooftop neon sign glowing
Like an electric stove ring set to medium.

by Carl Watson

I hate to admit
That after all these years
It’s finally come time to say
I’ve been faking it all along
Faking my interests
Pretending to talents I don’t have,
And generally acting this whole part,
Which is inconsistent at best,
If not false. In fact,
Very little of me that you see
Is really me. I mean
Nothing here is new or true,
And I’m a poor actor, anyway,
So, you’ve probably already guessed.
At my deceptions, and
Dismissed my act as bad mime,
But it’s ok, we all have to find.
A workable costume in the wardrobe room
So, when we do step out onto the boards
Of worldly woe and wild desire,
We’ll be viewed appropriate to our want
And hopefully heard, too,
By actual paying customers.

by Carl Watson

Everybody talked,
People did seem to remember,
There had been a turning point,
At some point—a stick-pin in time,
A posted position in space,
But they did not know if it was cataclysmic
Or came about gradually
Like a frog in slowly heating water.
No one could state a specific date, either
Only vague periods were ever mentioned
Times they both had, and had not, lived through:
The 80s, the 90s, the 60s, the early Oughts,
After the rigged election, before the maelstrom,
Pre-digital, post AIDS, post Covid,
But before Elvis, and after the Beatles,
Perhaps it happened in the Swift-Beyonce Gap,
After that last assassination,
But before that shocking TV documentary
That changed everything, back in the day.
Remember? How in the time of ADHD,
There had been a spate of earthquakes,
Maybe they caused the problem.
Geology was tricky then,
Astrophysics were way out of line:
A ring of fire had appeared in the sky.
Solar storms were also cited,
And gamma rays gone rogue.
Regular conflicts were often invoked
Like TV time slots in the longest of broadcast days:
Before the war—many were sure
It was then. But what war was that?

The war that came after or the one before?
There were so many to account for.
Some traced the cause back to when
They could sort of remember
A purpose to their existence. Yes!
That was a time of contentment.
All agreed. Subscription even seemed
To promise a meaningful life.
Others said the problem began with a decline
In the ability to make informed choices,
Proportionate to the increase in choices
Among consumer items and services.
It was common then that those still capable
Of reason as opposed to emotion,
Would go off on long self-assured tirades
About The End Times, at the end of which,
They might state humbly, that just maybe,
They were wrong about it all anyway,
So please don’t pay attention
To anything they just said.
Like many a modern politician,
They simply “misspoke” rather than lied,
Followed rather than led,
And repeated what was told them,
All while thinking what they actually said
Was really their own thought,
Which everyone knew it was not,
And so, in the end, the questions didn’t matter,
Everyone just went about their day,
Dismissive of all conflict, following
Their bliss toward profit
And being the best that they could be.

by Carl Watson

The English Queen was laid to rest
After weeks of pomp and circumstance.
Long queues of mourners
Lined the London streets in sympathy
As the trumpets of has-been Empire
Blew their fanfares, their folderols.
It cost the UK a pretty pound
To put her down in such style,
But good money was made,
And all her sins were forgiven.
TV specials played for days.

Meanwhile, somewhere in rural America,
Another John Doe had had enough,
Enough of the bruising loneliness,
Enough of debt’s weight, and the end of hope.
He drags an old oak door up
The wooded hill behind his house
With a harness of yellow nylon rope,
After painting the door in camouflage.
To match the ground vegetation.

He sits for a moment in the memories
Of all his storied wounds,
And the chronic pains accrued
Over years at thankless jobs,
Opens the bottle of Oxycodone
Saved up for this occasion,
Takes the prescribed medication
In one hard swallow,
Then sits to rest in the 4-ft. deep grave
He’d spent his last days digging.

He slides the oak door closed to the sky
Lies back and waits for the fog of forgetting.
Winter is coming, and no one will notice
His absence till spring, when warmer weather
Frees the scent of death from the damp earth,
Sprouting the seed of a new American Dream.