“GUILT ISN’T GOING TO HELP

YOUR FRIENDS OF COLOR.”

I already dropped the swords I bought,

since it’s not like I can afford to die

in a hospital

in the first place.

 

It’s alright. I wasn’t really trained to hold

or use them,

while piloting a hang glider for the first time,

to begin with.

 

So it’s just as well that I’m looking up,

and I’m reading this advertisement

scrawled across the kind of blimp

they used to build for pulp magazine covers

in the 1920s. Or so I’ve read somewhere.

 

Who knew blimps were still popular?

Were there more horrible surprises this year,

as opposed to last year being the longest year

on emotional and spiritual record,

or am I just getting sick

from all of this terrible, miserable information

that’s going around and around?

And then probably around again.

 

I look at the message on the blimp again.

Probably another five minutes,

before I’m back at the bottom of the new slapstick

animation skyscraper they just put up.

 

The Nazis are back in town.

No, I know. They never, ever left.

But they’re down there.

And I just wanted to help,

but I’ve lost a lot of faith

in my aim,

or whether or not they are even down there anymore.

It took a long time to work up the courage

and the lungs to climb the shifty stairs

of the last nine floors.

 

I see the blimp one more time,

and I wonder who thought it was a good idea

to use the topic of white guilt

to sell yet another line of sexy Donald Trump

cyberpunk Halloween costumes.

Or are those for the War on Christmas?

 

“GUILT ISN’T GOING TO HELP

YOUR FRIENDS OF COLOR.”

Now they tell me.

Oh well.

See you on the ground.