The Post-Apocalyptic Photographer

Gaza

2009-01-21T19:45:00.001-08:00

Poor, commiserate soil
Empty, impotent dirt
From which nothing can grow
Beaten and crushed
Treaded upon
Frozen solid, but there’s no snow
Stuck, instead, in time
In a past it’s impossible to know
One lush with life
But no love
But happy nonetheless
Full of sound
And lightness
And beauty
Things treading lightly
Unaware of the damage they cannot cause
But now nothing will sprout
Put away the watering can
Pull the seeds out
Wall off the ground
Fill it
And pull out
But this land bears scars
From you
From them
From where you tread
Unaware of the damage you cannot undo
100 centuries of kindness
Cannot unmake
All of the poison
You sowed in place of hate
So fight
Fight now
Fight on
Fight forever
But remember the Thrush
Flipping along
Soaring through a sunset
Its plumage flushed
And remember the deer
With their mouths in the undergrowth
And hoofs in the soil
And the shearwater
Stuck firm in its dive
And all the other things
That existed before your claims
And your strife
And your god
And theirs too
And your walls
And your signs
And your books
That existed, somewhere, in the beginning
With the land
Before you came marching along
All your heads in the sand
Unable to realize that what you tread upon
Was no-one’s in the first place
Along with everything, too
But one day
It’ll all disappear
Like a Nightingale from an open cage
And you’ll be there with your land
Unable to pick the fruit it bears
Stuck, eternally, in the place you stole your home
Unable to pass through the eye of a needle
Much less leave
Or let yourself be gone

Natural Creation, Natural Destruction

2008-12-22T17:41:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, for the 'good' of all, some aspects of nature have to be destroyed, no matter how long they have been growing. It is natural, and it is a shame. And, if you're watching, it's heart-breaking.

Old, proud and strong

And up our trees grew

Limbs outward and trunks upward

And roots the ground through

And birds perched high up in their branches

Screeching lullabies thick with truth

And things scurried about their bottoms

Picking and scavenging, hands full of fruit

But now do you hear the popping

Soft + far away?

Can you hear them breaking

Moaning as they sway?

Limbs spread out

Heavy with wet + decay

They know you can tell

And they bow themselves in shame

And twist in the wind

Crying as they break

And be swift as you run

For there is no place to stay

And can you hear the birds

Calling out as they fly?

They lack places to sit + sing

Finding only places to die

And all the little things

Stepping about your feet in your flight

Lack a place to sleep

Or a place to hide

And now the snapping resounds

All around your head

“Now where are you going?,”

Sing out the dead

From their suburbs + strip malls

“To put your kind,” you respond, “to bed.”

And so the path becomes thick with limbs

By the time the sun rises on a world

Colder than the life that preceded this dark

The life that had brought the birds their bread

And allowed the Sparrows to sing

The hunter now a farmer instead

And they land among the stumps

Unsure of how to lark

And they cry and they sway

And you stand amidst the branches

Only their stories for company

And wonder how to push forward

Or why

And the snapping has stopped

Leaving no life, only the sway

Of the branches you remember

That grew up through the sky

Patchworking overhead, framing the stars

Now lying, burning, in a funeral fire

Rubsam '08

Reading Beyond the News

2008-10-05T08:31:00.000-07:00

http://www.projectcensored.org/top-stories/category/y-2009/
Sometimes in order to truly understand the world, one has to look outside of the information that their country, in terms of both government and media, is projecting onto the world's situations, like to a screen. Reading the stories we don't want to publish is a good starting point, because it challenges the common world-view. Expanding to outside news sources (BBC, Al-Jazeera), if you are within the U.S., is a good place to go next.

Also, on a side note, I should have that Shearwater concert review from June done pretty soon, because I should finish it before I do it for when I see them again.

Life Under Terrorism

2008-08-19T09:41:00.000-07:00

This article, originally published in the Guardian, is written by Hicham Yezza, who I posted about awhile ago. In it he describes his detention under Britain's Terrorist Act.
Not my article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/18/terrorism.civilliberties
The UN's committee on human rights has just published a report criticising Britain's anti-terror laws and the resulting curbs on civil liberties. For many commentators the issues raised are mostly a matter of academic abstractions and speculative meanderings. For me, it is anything but. These laws have destroyed my life.
On May 14 I was arrested under section 41 of the Terrorism Act - on suspicion of the "instigation, preparation and commission of acts of terrorism": an absurdly nebulous formulation that told me nothing about the sin I had apparently committed. Once in custody, almost 48 hours passed before it was confirmed that the entire operation (involving dozens of officers, police cars, vans, and scientific support agents) was triggered by the presence on my University of Nottingham office computer of an equally absurd document called the "al-Qaida Training Manual", a declassified open-source document that I had never read and had completely forgotten about since it had been sent to me months before.
Rizwaan Sabir, a politics student friend of mine (who was also arrested), had downloaded the file from the US justice department website while conducting research on terrorism for his upcoming PhD. An extended version of the same document (which figures on the politics department's official reading list) was also available on Amazon. I edit a political magazine; Rizwaan regularly sent me copies of research materials he was using, and this document was one.
Within hours of my incarceration I had lost track of time. I often awoke thinking I had been asleep for days only to discover it wasn't midnight yet. My confidence in the competence (and motives) of the police ebbed away. I found myself shifting my energies from remaining cheerful to remaining sane. In the early hours, I was often startled by the metallic toilet seat, crouched in the corner like some sinister beast.
For days on end, I drew cartoons and wrote diary entries in the margins of Mills and Boon novellas. I spent hours reciting things to myself: names of Saul Bellow characters, physics Nobel prize winners, John Coltrane albums, anything to keep the numbness away.
I'm constantly coming across efforts being made to give detention without charge the Walt Disney treatment: the crushing weight of solitary confinement is painted as a non-issue; the soul-sapping nothingness of the claustrophobic, cold cell is portrayed as a mild inconvenience. Make no mistake: the feeling that one's fate is in the hands of the very people who are apparently trying to convict you is, without doubt, one of the most devastating horrors a human being can ever be subjected to. It is (to misquote Carl von Clausewitz) the continuation of torture by other means.
"Those who have nothing to hide, have nothing to fear," goes the tautological reasoning of the paranoia merchants calling for harsher, ever more draconian "security" measures - as we saw throughout the 42-days debate. They should read Kafka: nothing is more terrifying than being arrested for something you know you haven't done. Indeed, it is the innocent who suffers the most because it is the innocent who is tormented the most. The guilty calculates, triangulates, anticipates. The innocent doesn't know where to start. The answers and the questions are absolute, unbreachable, towering conundrums.
I underwent 20 hours of vigorous interrogation while entire days were being completely wasted by the police micro-examining every detail of my life: my political activism, my writings, my work in theatre and dance, my love life, my photography, my cartooning, my magazine subscriptions, my bus tickets.
Aspects of my life that would have been seen as commendable in others were suddenly viewed as suspect in my case for no apparent reason other than my religious and ethnic background. I was guilty of being that strangest of creatures: a Muslim who reads; who studied engineering yet writes about Bob Dylan; was a vocal opponent of the Iraq war yet owns all of Christopher Hitchens' writings; admires Terry Eagleton yet defends Martin Amis; interviews Kazuo Ishiguro, listens to Leonard Cohen, goes to Radiohead concerts, all of which became the subject of rather bizarre questioning.
This is not all: outside, lives are shattered, jobs are lost, marriages are destroyed, minds are damaged, friends and families are traumatised - often irrevocably so. My parents, whom I wasn't allowed to call, could barely get any sleep throughout the ordeal. Many of my Muslim university friends were, and still are, worried about being targeted themselves. For most of my loved ones, despite my innocence, nothing will ever be the same again. I'm now jobless, facing destitution and threatened with deportation from the country I've called home for nearly half my life.
Immense pressure is exerted on law enforcement agencies by their political mandarins to produce "results": pressure to produce a higher number of arrests but also the corollary, more dangerous, impulse to justify them at any cost. Naturally, through a perverted but pervasive circularity in the logic, lack of evidence becomes the very justification for requesting "more time". The government claims that checks and balances will ensure extensions to detention periods are based on verifiable and compelling arguments. I beg to differ: in my case, the judge was simply bullied by streams of technospeak until she had no option but to grant extra time.
Fighting terrorism is a serious matter and needs to be tackled in a serious way - not through empty gimmicks sustained by fear-mongering and alarmist rhetoric. The real danger is that we are witnessing a slide from the essential purity of habeas corpus into a Britain where the innocent are detained until proven guilty.
· Hicham Yezza, an activist and writer, was released without charge after six days in custody, immediately rearrested on immigration charges and issued with a removal order to Algeria, after which he was held for a further 27 days; he is still awaiting a conclusion to his deportation case freehicham.co.uk

I have no commentary for this article. It is beyond that. It merely requires as wide a dissemination as possible. If you come across this post, post it somewhere else. This story needs to be told.

Academic Freedom?

2008-05-26T11:38:00.000-07:00

Not my article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24817065/
"LONDON - Academics at a university in central England say a Muslim student and staffer were detained for nearly a week under British terrorism laws for attempting to print an al-Qaida manual as part of the student's dissertation research.
The arrest of 22-year-old Nottingham University master's student Rizwaan Sabir and staff member Hicham Yezza has riled professors and raised questions about how closely authorities should be policing university work. Both were released without charge six days later, although Yezza, an Algerian, was subsequently re-arrested for violating immigration laws and is being deported.
Sabir was writing on the American approach to al-Qaida in Iraq, according to his dissertation supervisor Rod Thornton, a terrorism researcher and a former British soldier. Sabir's supporters say he downloaded and sent the al-Qaida training document to Yezza, an acquaintance, because he didn't want to pay the printing fee. Someone then alerted police, who swooped in and arrested them both on May 14.
Sabir's academic adviser, Bettina Renz, said Saturday that the manual — freely available on the U.S. Department of Justice Web site — was "obviously" part of her student's research into Islamic extremism.
"If I was researching the subject very likely I would have looked at this myself," Renz said. "The severity of the reaction is just mind-boggling to me, to be honest."
Others are furious that Yezza, a 30-year-old former Ph.D. student at Nottingham, faces deportation for what lawmaker Alan Simpson said looked like an attempt to make up for a botched terror raid.
"I can see no reason for an emergency deportation of Mr. Hicham (Yezza) other than to cover the embarrassment of police and intelligence services," Simpson said in a letter written to Liam Byrne, Britain's borders and immigration minister.
Nottinghamshire Police declined to speak about the arrests, but in a statement carried in various newspapers, including The Muslim News and The Times Higher Education Supplement, they argued their actions were justified. Britain's Home Office, which is responsible for immigration matters, refused to comment on the case.
Nottingham University said in a statement that it was re-evaluating how to provide protection to "those who are conducting legitimate research in what might be controversial areas." A spokeswoman for the university did not immediately respond to telephone and e-mail messages seeking comment Sunday.
Sabir and Yezza's supporters plan a free-speech demonstration Wednesday during which staff will read excerpts from the manual in front of the university library, according to Alf Nilsen, a professor at Nottingham's School of Politics and International Relations.
He said the arrests were a violation of human rights and academic freedoms. "I do think this particular incident actually illustrates the potentially draconian consequences of anti-terror legislation," he said.
Human rights groups have complained that Britain's anti-terrorism laws — which bar the possession of "material useful for terrorism" — could criminalize researchers or even just the merely curious. Authorities here have previously foundered at least once before in an attempt to prosecute pupils based on their reading material.
In February a British court overturned the convictions of five Bradford University students jailed for downloading information on bomb-making and terrorism from the Internet. Police found a U.S. military guide to making explosive devices, a suicide bombing manual and jihadi songs, but a Court of Appeal ruled that prosecutors had failed to make the case that the men planned to use the information to incite terrorism.
The students said they were simply researching Islam.
Copyright 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed."
My response:

In what sense does academic freedom exist? A University should hold the right to teach whatever it pleases without the eagle eye of the police state swooping in to check in on it. So long as anti-terror legislation exists as a form of thought control, so much as you cannot read the other side's views for risk of becoming a 'terrorist' yourself, how can freedom for the exchange and dissemination, as well as the teaching, of information remain? Robert McNamara, in the movie The Fog of War, disclosed that one of his principles is to "empathize with your enemy", at least in terms of understanding them, and why they do what they do. This lack of empathy brought the world a hair's bredth from nuclear war during the Cuban Missle Crisis, and caused the prolonged travesty that was the Vietnam war. And so, today, during which the recycled cold war slogan of "the enemies of freedom" is endlessly repeated, our absoute, complete, and utter misunderstanding, and, indeed, misrepresentation and ignorance, of the motives and mindset of our 'enemies' will ultimately lead to our destruction, if we can't get out of the mindset ourselves that we are fighting a war for 'freedom' against 'terrorists' who "hate freedom". And what better place to disregard this barbaric and immature mindset then within the confines of academia? What place better to "empathize with your enemy" than within a school setting, where it may even be required to do so?
If the schools and colleges and universities are so great a place for us to become citizens of the world, to truly understand the problems and practices of our time, how can we learn if we are not allowed to even attempt to "empathize" without it being prosecuted as terrorism? Is knowledge terrorism? Can academic terrorism exist? If it does, it is certainly practiced by the state. For who can learn anything when any knowledge whatsoever is off-limits? Are we really so dull and cheap and simple as to be roped off into a set outline for what we can and can't learn?
I don't know how to answer these questions. I don't know if anyone can. But please, we have to do something to prevent a man from being deported purely for pursuing his god-given right to learn, and learn freely.

There's A Light

2008-05-19T13:51:00.000-07:00

The other night I drove over 3 hours to get to a small club on Mass Ave in Cambridge called the Middle East Downstairs. Containing a few benches, two bars, and a small, waist-high stage, this place couldn't have housed more than 200 concertgoers tops. And I can't think of a better place to see Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra + Tra-La-La Band, one of my favorite bands. By the time the opening band, AM/PM started, I'd already drank about five cups of water, gone to the bathroom twice, talked to the only member of AM/PM (though he'd invited some friends, and I'll get back to that later) bought his limited edition ep, along with a Silver Mt. Zion album I didn't have, and a tour poster. And yet, though I didn't start walking towards the stage till I saw him do the same, I still got about four or so people back from the stage.

In any case, he put on a great set. He'd flown in from Los Angeles that day, and the airport had lost all of his equipment, so he we using entirely borrowed equipment. At first, it was just him, playing a guitar line, then hitting a pedal, and it would keep looping as he played another. He'd do that for a little while, and he was a great, very melodic guitarist, and then he'd move over to the drums. And that's where he really shined. He was incredible at the set, both at just making noise, and playing fairly complex patterns, but never losing a beat. After a few songs like that two of his friends from the area came on to play bass and saxophone, and they put on a great show.After the set, during which he had no microphone, so he had to yell out at the crowd, he threw out his drumsticks, and I caught one.And soon after the opening band came on. By that time, I'd gotten to the point where I was roughly two people from the front, center stage.

They tuned for a little while, maybe five to ten minutes. Then the music playing over the PA cut off, and the lights dimmed a bit, and they were all on at once, though most were on already. Efrim announced a few things, and then they launched into 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, the title track off of their new album.

Everything about this track was spot-on. All of the playing was excellent, except the intensity, energy, and volume were all up about twelve notches. The band yelled and sang along with Efrim, particularly on the beginning ramp up, and the "We! Will! Not! Sing!" call and response much later. This one got the crowd really involved, seeing at least the level of intensity, and the very loud, and kind of slow vocal delivery. Ian, the other guitarist, was particularly into it, as he spit when he sang.

The band themelves played like a team. They were constantly looking at each other for cues and such to make sure they didn't mess up an entrance, or to better keep a part together. Next they moved into Could've Moved Mountains, an old song back from Born Into Trouble As the Sparks Fly Upward, this time revamped with a new "second part we're still figuring out how to play." The full band orchestration, complete with dedicated drum, guitar, bass, and string parts, which lasted about a good 10 minutes, felt like a total reinvention of the quiet, mid-to-downtempo original, with passionate singing by Jessica and Sophie particularly.

They played a new song, I Built Myself a Metal Bird and Fed It The Wings of Other Metal Birds, which was "about arts and crafts." The opening lick was played by Sophie on violin, using an effect that made it sound as if it were an electric guitar. Featuring at least 4 different sections, all carrying their own rock/classical/or a mix of both feel. Whatever album this one ends up on, I'm really excited for it. A really first-rate song, I'd say. It was also very loud, and very involving. Alot of yelling came into place too.

Next they played Mountains Made of Steam off of Horses in the Sky. Featuring, again, full band orchestration, this time with a new section with a dedicated drum part, soaring strings, and intense vocal crescendos, this may have been the best performed song of the set. The whole crowd was screaming along with the incredibly emotional vocals of Menuck, which reached its vocal height when he sang "Somewhere, there's a mother...A Mother! A Mother! A Mother! A Mother!"

For the final song of their initial set they played the first track off their new album, 1,000,000 Died to Make This Sound. More vocally driven than the album version, it maintained the same incredible bassline, and was much louder. Hitting every note, and then some, this was the perfect closer. It involved the whole band, and had the whole crowd, at least where I was, swaying to the beat. Every member of the band was spot on the whole performance. During tuning between songs they chatted it up with the audience, showing a remarkably quick wit, and starting whole conversations with certain (loud) audience members, including a particularly long one in which they accused a guy near me if he was the internet because he'd yelled something to the tune of "Don't get Godspeed back together, this music is just fine." Then he answered back, "yeah," and Ian responded with "well, I didn't know the internet was in boston." Some guy yelled something on the side, so the people near me responded by yelling at him to shut up. "Oh, so you know each other?" Efrim asked, to which I responded "We're the internet!" He had a good laugh at that. There were longer ones which encompassed everything from whether they used the internet, to what an audience member's favorite color was, to Ted Kennedy's condition. The best Efrim line of the night had to have been "You're a goddamn fucking flower thief."

After leaving, they came back on for an encore. I yelled at them "Do one for Kennedy!" to which Efrim answered "We did them all for Kennedy." They played only one song, unfortunately, but one hell of a song it was. A full band orchestration of Microphones in the Trees, with beautiful new string, vocal, bass, and drum parts, which outclassed the original in every single way.

And the ending was by far the best part. After all of the classical orchestration, anchored by that one cello and bass part that drove the original song entirely, and guitar noise, the song slowed down entirely, with most everyone singing "Microphones in the trees..." until Efrim bent down and picked up a megaphone. He sang through it for a little while, sending a bizarre, echo-and-distortion-laden fuzz over his vocals and through the P.A. And then he stopped singing, and hit a button on the megaphone, which played the last line he just sang. He did this again, and by then all of the instruments had stopped playing. "Microphones in the trees..." it sang softly and beautifully. And he did it a few more times, holding the megaphone above his head, as it slowly got more and more distored. "Microphones in the trees..." it kept singing, "Microphones in the trees..."[img]

Birdsong Amidst Rubble

2008-04-24T18:09:00.000-07:00

“This space is so lonely,”
The Blue Nightingale sang
“with no colour left to fill it.”
So angry and desolate
He flew away
Into the
Sunset
“I never tried to be
anything other than what
I
Tried to see
And if these times were
My home
No wonder I’m so
Alone
But please,
Colours,
Return to me
Because else there’s nothing
Left
For me to see.
And if the flame shot out
Over the factory
I pray the oil would
Consume
All of ‘we’
So if these blues are
My
Song
What was the
Use
Of singing it
All along?
And if love was so
Fickle
What’s the use of being
In league
With it?
So please,
Featureless grey
Slip away at night
Before the
Day
And when I will
Wake
I pray the sky will quake
And spew forth
Life and love
And loneliness
For these times
Which I could
Never
Forget
And shower me
In its
Rays
And pray it cures this cancer
Beneath my wings
And the feathers
Will fall from
My
Skin
And, naked, I am
Pure again
And I just hope they
Will understand
That all the choices I made
Were for something else
And this love which
Silently stayed
Will slowly slip away
And may it never show its face
So I may never say its
Name
Again
And I hope it
Will understand
When I quietly throw it
To the sea
And as it bobs
Up on the surf
I sing to its slowly
Dissolving
Berth."

Rubsam 08

Oasis in the Endless Desert/Water Bubbling from Sand

2008-03-16T18:42:00.000-07:00

Amid all that decays inside of us, there lie tiny bits of salvation, little things that cling to life as the cancer attacks and attacks and attacks, that represent something of what we were before. However, like a well standing amidst a sea of sand, this is merely one point; to pass through, even with these stations of life, is the true challenge.

Beauty in the Eye of the Storm

2008-02-19T14:17:00.000-08:00

It may appear that this great tide we are all drowning in has no end nor abatement; no beauty nor innocence. But there is abatement, at least so long as we are safe in the eye. But how long can this eye surround us before it flows on?

Relic Four, A Poem

2007-08-30T19:29:00.000-07:00

I dreamt of the city
Its concrete stocks stretching past the sky
Its needle-wielding masses pricking themselves in the dark
Its quiet ineptitudes
Its browning green
Its decaying streets
Its mindless, faceless masses never making eye contact with each other
Its signs that read
No vacancy/Rooms for Sale
Its women that shine in the neon light
Its glass that glints in the sun
Its pigs surveying the sheep
Its shards of glass
Its bloodied bodies
Its crying mothers
Its fathers on fire
Its endless miles of strip-malls
Its clogged streets
Its emptiness
Its cars on fire
Its skies full of grey streaks
Its masses choking themselves with their own ties
It’s Everything
It’s Nothing

I dreamt of a city where I was a bird
And there was a great wind that I could not fly against
And was instead blown farther back than where I’d started from
And no one else could fly either
But there were no other birds
We were all the same bird
And even when we all worked together
We could not get past the wind

I dreamt of a city
Filled with water up to my waist
And all around me others trudged through this water
But they never heard me nor saw me
And helicopters flew over our heads
But never came down to get us out
And people beat on their upstairs windows
Trapped as the water rose higher
And mothers holding babies close to their chests slipped underneath
As did fathers holding children above their heads
And the water rose to my neck

I dreamt of a city in chaos
Fire burned the streets
Bodies tumbled off of buildings
Shattered glass cut my feet
Police shot everything they saw
Explosions rocked the sky
And the skyline burned

I dreamt of a city of nothing
The sky had been on fire
But now the air was filled with ash
The buildings were a colorless grey
As were the bodies that littered the streets
It was totally quiet
And scraps of burning paper fell from the sky
And sparrows lay in droves on the ground
Dust crumbled underneath my feet
And messages were written with blood on the walls
The rivers overflowed with black sludge
And fish lapped in waves upon the shore
And all the crashed cars were on fire
The families inside had strangled themselves
Bibles in their hands and rosaries taut around their necks
Dogs were tied in plastic bags
Left in rows along the roadside
And the cows lay in burning rows in their fields of dust
And the faucets dripped out yellow water
And the power lines lay entwined like lovers on the ground
And this stretched as far as the eye could see

I dreamt of the city

Rubsam ‘07

Relic Three, Pictures

2007-08-20T18:30:00.000-07:00

Relic Two, Pictures

2007-08-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

These are pictures of a world soon to pass beyound our reach. The green of this land may be replaced by gray and red, but the memory in these pictures will last us forever.

Relic One, a Poem

2007-08-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

Our Asphalt Dreams
Fucked Us Over So Hard
We Don’t Even Know Which Way Is Forward
And the Populous just screams
For more easy Answers
And Our Rivers Overflowed
Rushing Our Children Deep Into Our Arms
And Our Hands Buried Themselves in the Dirt
The Rusted Car Door
Sang a Song So Sweet
As the Trees Fell Down One by One Around Our Ears
And the Funnels Sucked All Life To the Sky
And how They Fucked Us
With their Stories Of Redemption
How We Had Deserved What We Got
And How the Faithful Would Survive
And How the Power Lines
Fell Like Trails
Leading Us Home In Their Glory
And How the Radios Played Their Static
As a Song for Endless Days
And How the People Clutched Each Other In Their Arms
Watching Their Lives Fall With Their Tears
Clutching Soldiers, Strangers, Enemies and Buildings
And How The Hands That Reached From the Sky
Threw Us Across the Seas
And How The Flickering TV played it’s symphony in white noise and colored-bars
Teaching Us All
About What Life Might Have Been
And How They All Ignored It
How They Told Us Nothing Was Wrong
As The Soil Died Beneath Our Feet
How They Told Us To Remain Calm
As The Wind Picked Up the Crowd
And Threw Them To the Stage
And How We All Closed the Blinds
And Ignored the Screams From Outside
And Turned On the Radio
The TV
Opened the Paper
And Pretended It Was Nothing
And How We All Just Laughed It Off
Until We All Lay Clutching Together In Bed
Plunging Our Fear Into Each Other
And How We Just Woke Up The Next Morning
And Ventured To Anywhere
Intending to Find Something
And How We Just Let the Waters Wash Our Neighbors Away
And How We Just Let the Power Coarse Through Their Brains
And How We all Just Dipped Our Heads Deep Beneath the Soap
And How We All Just Went on As Normal
And How We All Just Plunged the Force-Fed Food Into Our Mouths
And How We All Just Screamed And Screamed At The Wall Until We Were Hoarse
And How We All Just Climbed Up To the Attic And Clasped Fingers and Prayed the Noise Would Stop
And How We Just Beat Our Fists Into a Bloody Pulp, Staining the Wall
And How We Just Let the Banging Pass By
And How, The Morning After, We All Climbed Up Onto Our Roofs
To Witness The New Landscape
The New World
The New Place We Had Created

Rubsam '07