Thank you to Mark Antony Rossi of Ariel Chart for publishing my poem in the March issue.

https://www.arielchart.com/2024/03/reconstructed-newsreels.html

Reconstructed Newsreels

 

Your progression of thoughts,

herky-jerky,

like old movie reels played.

A shabby, cramped newsstand,

next to a hosting train station.

Newspapers delivering reports,

using wrecked grammar,

as quickly as flood waters rise.

Not dispatching

the past or the future,

but only what hums right now.

 

A collective desolation,

strange, yet familiar.

You know in your head

the sweet arms of happiness,

or the sparkling beauty

of dew encrusted grass,

as your fellow man intended.

 

Tragedies proclaimed,

about others who struggle

no less than you.

 

Hold your familiars close,

and grow them 

in greater numbers,

and know

that you

can change

each day’s headlines

if you stand

side by side

with all the others

Whose warm hearts 

 do not register controversy.