Holiday Spasm War

This holiday season's copywriting has enjoyed a hugely successful conversion rate despite an accelerating economic downtown and consumer uncertainties, and it's largely thanks to Chaffbyte, the upstart automated AI marketing platform utilizing machine learning trained on a proprietary dataset of ransom notes provided by assorted police agencies, international law enforcement, and true crime collectors. It's as if Herman Kahn's famed escalation ladder had finally been effectively translated into a rewarding sales funnel. #chaffbyte #escalationdominance #hermankahn #machinelearning #ransomnotes

Poem for Jill and Wonder Valley

JILL WAS RIGHT

It was May the first,
and Jill was right.
Wonder Valley was never designed
to be a success.

The unseasonal Burning Man
reeling drunk on Faux Squalor,
a cocktail of reclaimed wood and rust,
slumps forward, and rests on uncalloused elbows.

The predatory rictus of lax capital fails to conceal
his impatience, awaiting a spark to engulf him
in a side-scrolling self-immolation.
All your tropes are belong to us.

But Jill was right.
Our island floats upon a basin
of fossilized water, a gift of briny surprise
that poisons outsourced dreams and nurses
a Potter's Field of yellowing dice,
bold ventures reduced to bone dust and gossip.

In the desert, shadows are treasured.
We brought our own shadows to mingle with the others
and loved them like our own.
There they were accepted, embraced,
tolerated, shunned, but never chased.
Empty space, like a lover at a loss for words,
the empty space needs respect.

*****

This was written following a spirited community meeting about a proposed 'wellness' resort to be built in Wonder Valley, CA.

Poem for Dale Dry Lake

DRY LAKE

Dale’s glimmering snow white disc
Late Pleistocene plenty
A palace of indifference,
Observant and faithless
Baited brine, noiselessly swelling
A crystal crust,
The day’s pregnant unrest

Hashtagged swag flail desert tropes
While a sunless virus is dreaming green,
Off-grid Dry campers,
Tuff Sheds scatter
Upon the deckled arid shore
Exurbanites bursting
Their Aeolian blisters

140 years of failed dreams
Recovered memory, and managed retreat

* * * * *

Thanks to James Colbert for editing assistance.