swifts  &  s l o w s · a quarterly of crisscrossings

life breaking rusted chains
James G. Piatt

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Symbols of Unreality

Inside walls
of emotional instability
thoughts
stumbling outside the edges
of sanity
bruised and beaten
pausing at the threshold
of non-reality as someone
stomps lies into
my soul to cause the
irrationality of darkness
To consume my lighted hours
The lies
rattling like steel pellets
in a tin can
enter my consciousness
wound my mind
with arrows soaked in lye
As they enter
my being
illogical symbols
etched on metal darts
they form metaphoric
delusions,
which contain
empty absurdities
of death’s
rusted unreality

But, I am Probably Dead

Thorns and cacti
wafting sharp aromas
into the broken black box
I call my mind
I am sitting in a mind fog,
and wondering
where is reality
Not in the letter from the government
that said I was dead and
they would no longer send me
Social Security checks
the printed pulp and goo that
held my life together,
seems to have been burned
in the furnace of bureaucracy
causing me to wonder if
indeed I am dead,
and just forgot
I don’t remember attending my funeral
of course during these
pandemic times
maybe I didn’t have one
but I don’t remember being buried
maybe I was cremated instead
and I am now sitting
in a silver jug
on the mantel next
to the ugly picture of aunt Susie
who shot her husband
one dark night when he came home drunk
from the local pub
thinking, so she said,
that he was an intruder coming
to do nasty things to her
which seemed to me
to be quite ordinary
since her face could stop a freight train
of course that is my take
on the whole thing,
but I can’t be sure since
I am probably dead

Political Confusion

Fields of
odorous scents of
political blossoms
created by fetid thoughts
of Senators swimming in
mentally toxic ponds
waft into the atmosphere
the scents disturbing
the fragrance of everyday
life breaking rusted chains
that once tied us to a single
understanding
now destroying
mutual oneness
the unleashing
of congressional
thoughts into the depths
of the absurd
stirs the bewilderment
found
Within muddled minds
and then that which once
contained our cohesion
vanishes into
an unreality covered
with lies and conspiracy theories
feelings shattered
by the irregularity of
raucous memories strewn
by the egregious impressions
of greed filled minds
shattered by drifting thoughts
into a solitary dance
of mental banality
a new political movement
that transforms everything
into confusion

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James, a retired professor, is a twice Best of Web nominee and three time Pushcart nominee. He has had five poetry books, The Silent Pond, (2012), Ancient Rhythms, (2014), LIGHT, (2016), Solace Between the Lines, (2019), and Serenity, (2022), over 1730 poems, five novels, seven essays and thirty five short stories published in over 256 magazines, anthologies and books. He earned his doctorate from BYU, and his BS and MA from California State Polytechnic University, SLO. He lives in Santa Ynez, California where the sun always shines, and it rarely rains.