Patrick Phillips is coming to campus tonight. A long day’s Monday into night precedes Patrick, including class at Stockton & a doctor’s appointment back in Linwood (“L-dubs”).

I have to find time to write my friend Kim back; Kim, whose weekly e-mail has been keeping me sane since March.

For now, Kim, if you read this (though I know you don’t entirely condone blogging, which loses a certain essential intimacy), I’m still thinking about your previous message from the weekend.

(And here, too, some pictures from the parade this weekend. Somehow, in a poem about creation and destruction, these feel appropriate.)

My Friend Kim
writes that
in those pre-Christian
times, in order for something
to be created,
something else
had to die/be destroyed

For something to be
built, something torn
down; Tear it all down.
Over and over, is
what you write

as I drink my tea
civilization
Turns into bruised/
intractable abscesses;
crumbling into
a cuppa; I shake
my head, yes.

A time, when all
partnerships would be
annulled

to start again
like that. Escape in
books & bodies and
(in Kundera’s words)
laughter & forgetting.

Each day
we will create
a new world,
and then––
allowing it
to go/be gone
in the morning and
not to regret; find strength
in that nothing remaining.

(Except I want you to
hold my hand while it
all goes, Kim.)

Is this the beginning of the end times? (Doo dah; doo dah.)

Care Bears in lifeboats drift past.

Alone, a man dressed as a fractured prune, dances & twirls.

Behold, Kali in all of her destructive fury!

Then, all of it, will go to the dogs.