Wells
Orwell
Heinlein and
Rand

Of ‘old’ letters
Of ‘knew’ letters
Of ‘new’ letters
Of ‘current’ letters

Primer of the coming years
Lessons for days of apocalypse
Burning piles of dystopia
And ‘it can’t happen here’

in my anger
and frustration
i stood on the sidewalk
waiting my turn to enter
the grocery store
our new bread line
then i saw it
hope
in the form
of a small blade of grass
pushing its way up
through a crack in
the unyielding asphalt
i am renewed

Where will the next Checkpoint Charlie be located?
Not the one we’ll stand on in order to peek over the wall,
The place where the federal elite will keep an eye on us,
The Checkpoint Charlie they’ll be able to shoot us from?
Yeah, some called for a wall to protect the American
From the foreigner, but it turns out we are the foreigner.
We are the foreign, we are not elite, we are expendable.

I admit it…
I failed at self-isolation today
But I was not alone
I ran into a friend
A retired Marine
He jus’ returned from China
He was out and about, like me
He told me this tale

How he flew out of China
Without being checked for Wuhan Flu
COVID-19
Coronavirus
Landing in Taiwan and had his temperature taken
He passed
Flew into Sea-Tac and left the airport
Without being checked
Landing in Las Vegas
No one stopped him
No one questioned him
No one took his temperature
Nothing
And no symptoms after two-weeks

Me: You’re fucking kidding me
Him: No, I fucking kid you not

So, here he is walking about Reno
Failing at self-isolation, like me
Yet, I’m out of work
My wife is out of work
My son and daughter-in-law, out of work
Grocery store shelves empty
Businesses labeled non-essential
Businesses closed
Gas lines longer than usual
Neighbors unemployed
Governments enforcing restrictions
But only on us who are at home
Us, who are living with social distancing
Possible jail time and fines
No wonder I’m pissed off

We are being lied too
He agrees

My shadow is pissing me off. He’s been underfoot most of the day.

no one I know is sick
wuhan flu to quarantine
so much frustration

i’ve always been
alone, alone, alone
even as a child
no one felt like me
i felt like no one
no one listening
no one talking
only too myself
and
my feelings
and
as an old man
i’m alone
in thought
in feeling
in action
and
i’ll die alone
like the child
i’ve always been

With St. Patrick’s Day a bust because of COVID-19, it’s ironic that our next big drinking holiday is Cinco de Mayo, sponsored by Corona Beer.

https://soundcloud.com/sierra-tom-darby/in-20200318

With a stick of dynamite and a length of fuse tucked in his saddle bag, Brady rode out to the pilings, where he’d encountered what he now knew to be dinosaurs. He walked around the one pile, searching for a possible explanation as to what had happened that night, but he could find nothing.

He explored the other piling, the one closest to the rocky hillside, and again found nothing. As he roamed between the pilings, he surveyed the shale-like ground beneath his boots.

He noticed a shape hidden in the rocky sand, which he cleared away. It took him only a couple of minutes to chip a large, sharp and very pointed claw, that like an eagle’s talon, only several times larger, from the hardened earth.

Holding it in his hand, Brady shuddered, before slipping it into his saddle bag and withdrawing the dynamite and fuse. He gouged out a crack in the base of the piling furthest from the hillside and placed the explosive in it.

Having already inserted the fuse into the stick, he uncoiled it to it’s full length before striking a match to it. Brady raced as quickly as he could to where he had ground tethered his horse and waited.

It wasn’t long before the destructive explosion sent the piling to the ground. He wandered over to the a heap, feeling certain he’d broken the place’s spell.

As he mounted his horse, he made eye contact with a coyote which sat quietly watching him.

The dinosaurs died out because of COVID-19 beause the T-Rex never covered his mouth when he coughed.