New Curfew

Now it’s a “suggested” curfew, dusk till dawn

for certain towns and it’s not hard to picture

the citizens of those towns huddled in their

homes waiting out the night. It’s not Covid

this time, with its masks and hand washing

its safe spacing away from your friend and

neighbors. It’s not all that simple this time.

No, this time it’s Triple E, a disease that once

was confined to horses and some other farm

animals. Now they only “suggest” that we keep

to the curfew. Now there’s a culprit that has been

a character in our lives for what seems like for-

ever. Don’t we all remember coming home on

a summer’s day scratching mosquito bites and

taking them in stride. But now, this nuisance

from years back is playing a part in all this. It’s

not hard to imagine them hiding in the backyard

planning their attack on us, if we don’t follow

the “suggested” curfew – they’re planning, they’re

plotting their taking over after we are all killed

off. The mosquito, that formerly unimportant part

of our lives, our summers, has risen up to take

their shot at getting control. They’re out there buzzing

that faint buzz we remember, trying to reassure us

and lure us out some time between dusk and dawn.

               Proper Form

I’m filling out the form, filling in

the blanks, you know the kind that

levels the field for us. We become

as we fill in blanks, like Name___

and Address_________ andother

relevant points of our identities.

They know us by what we put down.

Before they can assign us a number

they need to know a bit about us.

They do ask if we are a robot, which

of course I am not. I make our mark

next to that point, as if a robot couldn’t

figure it out and fill this out. They want

my Date of Birth_______________

my Phone Number______________

and in this case, for this form, they want

Full Name of Emergency Contact___

and an ominous sounding Return Airport

which notes that this would be where 

in case of emergency I should be flown.

This is the form before me, the one I will

fill out today. It lets me know what is so

important about me that I must share if

I hope to get my name on their list of

properly identified individuals who will

fill out any form put in front of him/her.

                   The End of…

A character came up with, “you can’t hide

from the End of the World in a goddamn

bathtub.” This rings especially true when

applied to our tub, white plastic fitted over

the old one, even the look-alike tiles are

plastic glued over the originals. There I’d

be sitting in the tub as the world burned up

all around me. The white plastic pouring in

like heavy cream, and I’m, of course, sitting

there becoming a tub of human chowder.

That’s if the world ends in fire, with global

warming and wildfires that seems a real

possibility. But if the opposite in the end

happens, destruction by ice would suffice and

all that was said about all that. I’d be sitting in

my plastic tub, teeth chattering, losing feeling

in my extremities, dozing off, ending up still

wondering whatever happened to the hot or

even warm water. When and if it comes, I’ll

probably run outside, stand in the middle of

my front lawn, hands at my side, looking up

then down, then all around, as it all falls apart

with me smack dab in the middle. So much

for that goddamn bathtub.