The pilot makes one last public announcement

This entry is part 1 of 14 in the series Morning Porch Poems: Summer 2014

 

This craft is about to criss-cross the most recently identified space fraught with tension and unrest. Do you see where blocks of citizens have formed chains and living fences overnight, and where police lines demarcate the outer limits with banks of tear gas? If any passengers wish to access the fast food counter or the rest rooms at this precise moment, they should know there is a 50% chance of perishing without having arrived at what our limited vocabulary can only hope will approximate sunrise on the rim of a great crater. There is no guarantee of fair trial, or that remains will be bottled and returned to home base. When seized by real panic (as opposed to just your everyday variety of ennui and restlessness), please refrain from mechanically succumbing to the tendency to click on a range of available tactile surfaces wired to digital or electronic outlets. They will fold in on themselves or retract, like language not connected to a visceral source. Some may have been programmed to self-destruct. There are certain things that ideally should be kept close at hand, until the end: first words, last words; our very young, the very old. Your open eyes, the rapidly clicking shutter of the mind; the ability to stand up, look them in the eye, brandish your right to be here and witness.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

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