Casting Spells

I quit watching the news
but it continues to seep
into my consciousness
like a virus getting a grip
it makes my stomach sick

I often found myself
rushing to stand
between the television
and my children
as the newscaster cast
spells of
school shootings
rapes
wars
mass graves,
of water logged
dead bodies
hanging from trees
among all the debris
from natural disasters

From where we stand
we can hear rockets launch
we can feel the rumble
of humanity slowly
leaving the planet
throughout the decades

Here, man has progressed
to the Moon and soon to Mars
Here man kills, rapes and drives
drunk from bars on the beach
to fill locked cells behind
iron bars, where we keep
a steady rotation of
the newly laid off
the new money rich
snowbirds
having sold
their small Yankee homes
coming here
to buy sand castles
as we stand together
fishing and hunting
studying and sunning
we slowly drive through history

We are the news
There is no need to watch it
We feel it
We take our pulse
as it thumps in our throat
and feel the collective anxiety
written on our to-do lists
as long as our strip malls
for another space mission
for another war to transition

Our thousands of
civilian
military
government
contractors
engineers
programmers
roofers
construction
Workers…