After 9112001, points

  and counter-points in debate were the guardrails that delayed an automatic strike back.  The "talks" included a wide variety of people of the world.  The "talks" were street-level to academic, popular sentiment to policy-fortressing in the government.  

  Article after article posited the high wire over politics and culture in action. 

  "You cannot call it culture wars!" The voice boomed. 

  "I CAN CALL IT ANYTHING I WANT." 

  "That is true, yet NOT WISE." 

  Others stacked up behind each debater. 

  Still others streamed chunks of Internet into data collection. 

  "Someone else may." 

  "So?" 

  "So, perhaps I should do it first!" 

  "But if you put that terminology out there, YOU CAN'T CONTROL IT." 

  People were bringing bags and pocketfuls of rubble into the room. 

"Hands off and put your hate away!"

  One man ordered another man. 

  Uh-oh.  A friendly black man uttered.  I thought they were queer-folk. 

  The "Love In" loudspeaker fell silent after human hand stumbled to cover the microphone.  Speaking-language interpreters cautioned not to be alarmed.  Someone markered onto a posterboard, NEXT IS WALK AROUND AND LOOK AT LITERATURE.  "Before they burn it," a hipster remarked sarcastically. 

  "Who's your they?" Someone asked. 

  "I've been told not to talk specifics." The hipster used a lice comb to streak dye the wig attached to a slouch hat.  "We're going back up to D.C. after this." 

 "Don't forget the Virginia Humanities Council boxes." Those had been ducked and dashed in and out of vehicles on the way.  Scholars were agreeing to stay in "hot spots" to help keep peace, culturally.  

  There had been factors and explanations of why to stop protesting "war".  And a renewal of the role of true conscientious objector.  Also, a group of civilians more interested in protecting a military than dismantling some vague complex.  "We're all Americans here.  So, what do we need to do?" 

  "He thinks he trained him." 

  "What?" 

  "Yah," a real Belgian confirmed the hearsay or affirmed the hearsay. 

  "You're saying the boy, man, might've been brainwashed." It wasn't a question.  A person with military experience had upped his game by doing the extensive sensitivity training. 

"In or out?" Was how

  a bunch of us wound up as independents.  Cars loaded with people who were one-step more committing to special interests. 

  Some people were literally being pulled in more than one direction.  

  "Fine.  Go with the militants!" 

  "They're Catholics." 

  At first there was an intellectual propensity to blame all this on young people just out of school.  As if the detachment from outlines and delineated time periods caused a cultural meltdown like a Chernobyl or a Fukishima.  "ALL OF THIS WAS OBVIOUSLY HAPPENING," a young person called it out. 

  A scraggly man demanded the knife from his backpack being carried by his woman.  He nicked his forearm.  Let some blood bead up on the skin.  Grabbed a pizza box out of an open-topped garbage can.  Started to paint a sign. 

     Klannies & Creeps

He smeared a bloody arrow pointing up but really indicating "the woods". 

  "THIS IS A CITY." A young woman determined to keep singing called out. 

  "This is a park.  A PARK." 

  "Are you saying somebody hurt you?" 

  The scraggly man wiped his blood off the knife on his shorts.  He put it back in the backpack. 

  "Do you want someone to investigate in that bit of woods?" A Scottish comic asked. 

  "That's not funny." 

  "They're not Christian.  And not nationalists.  At least, not a contemporary nation of America."  The sign had drummed up hours of conversation and clamming ups.  The scraggly man had moved to the end of the parking area to smoke meth. 

  "What are they?" Faces with sincere questions. 

  "Thanks for coming by the way," a little sister told a big sister. 

  The big sister looked at the young people one at a time.  "Hate groups." 

  "Like that's not obvious." 

  "Not funny." 

  "I'm not to be funny all the time." 

 

Patch of Dirt

  "Nobody owns it."  One girl announced vehemently. 

  "Actually that's not true.  We all do." Said a guy. 

  "No rocks.  No sticks." Said the leader. 

  "What are we doing out here?" 

  "Where's yours?" 

  "My what?" 

  "You're patch of dirt?" 

  "Wherever I stand or sit." 

  "The nerve." 

  "Get away from me." 

  "Do we have to do this exercise?" 

  Everyone had left their stuff in a pile at the mouth of the campsite. 

Looking for...

  Turned out I wasn't the only college-aged kid who'd crammed my head with a fury of the world, soaked up as much fleeting but it existed, and cherished the coming-togethers that had happened.  I took my frantic self to my mom's workshop where she'd produced painting, sculpture, and poetry.  She was midstream on raising a housefull of teens with our Dad, and so, somewhat annoyed that the one that should have "launched" was smoking cigarettes on her porch and clearly-to-her uncertain about "the future". 

  "What's your through-line?" She glanced at a pile of research notes and writing.  "My what?" She went off to make dinner. 

  The actual world did not crumble when she did. 

  In the morning all the paperwork was in folders and a box.  The ashtray was in the yard away from the windows.  "Your father hates that smell.  Those killed his mother.  Your nana."  A cloud of smoke being brushed away but not hidden or gone.  "Nothing's matching up." 

  "What's your through-line?" 

"Everybody done playing everybody?"

  None of the new people answered.  Some were too weak; some, heads too scrambled from being leashed to mentors in the various arms of service. 

  "Good.  Because we don't do that.  We're the Forest Service people people." 

  Not one person quit the introductory training that year. 

"A pile of humpty dumptys?"

  "Yeah." 

  The artist woman's facial expression deflated into simplified.  She listened. 

  "Now everybody is disillusioned." 

  "So, the illusion is what's broken?!" 

  Young people still in shock looked at what the woman said like the words were physical things on the lawn. 

  "Some of us might be too." 

  "I get that, but no." 

  "What do you mean, no?" 

  "I don't accept that from you." She didn't point but met eyes.  "Or you.  Or you." She insisted across the space between seeing each other. 

"Stop running."

  People had guns drawn and everybody was "right". 

  The two's had tracked each other.  Some were to stay couples.  Others had grudges and grievances and were themselves being "tracked" by Feds and people charged with law enforcement. 

  To be sure a worn down service layer of America needed some "mental health" repair.  But a tanking economy, stretched shoe string budgets, fuck ups, and baggage was mucking up smooth process. 

  "Put some pants on," an Administrator volunteered on some time off to explain a number of processes to a number of people.  "How you gonna go overseas wit no passport idiot?" A rabidly hungry herself and having been being shirked of child support woman called out from a perimeter around service people who might give it another go around. 

  "Who dat?" Tired and still drunk called to thought-you-were-a-buddy.  Upper ranksmen stood ready to hold back all interested parties from fighting. 

  Dirty Feds-one-time and gov't workers with stolen information on people were kept behind a screen.  "As long as it takes to sort this out," a retiring-soon authority told loved ones about attending graduation. 

Back then/on that

  Peoples' journies trained and collided at times.  

  Some of the came in aheads waited.  Hid in fact.  Some in plain sight, some like crouching spiders.  There are times news gets ahead of a guard-railed cycle.  Flights were coming back to the Homeland from all over the world.  There were kinks in the censorship. 

  Enemies were chasing corporate types.  And an infiltrated-by-enemy community health care allowed topics about "mental health" to be PSA over the radio waves. 

  The connectors in our communications passed along critical information to service commanders.  Even as the radio told a generally discontent American popular that veterans are, many, "suicidal" the came in aheads had to ward off, combat "style" enemies stashed across the professional and residential field.  Or else it could have been more disappeared and even killed and staged as suicide. 

  Fortunately service people stay in war mode even during "cease fire" and other rhetoric used to help a general public survive and thrive. 

  By Mother's Day the land was really finding its voice.  Leafed trees and the songs of creatures awakening from winter.