poem
Volume 36, Number 2

A Public Safety Announcement

The strange thoughts you’ve been having
aren’t your own naturally
nor the denial, disbelief and forgetting

don’t trust yourself to keep reading
these words of warning now your awareness
has alerted that which possesses you

instead increase your mindfulness
and retrospectively monitor
all you said and did before

repeating it over and over
so they can’t keep it all erased,
and make notes for yourself

that you’ll find so you’ll be reminded
of who you once were and might be
again given some sort of cure

yet we don’t know how to stop them
how they arrived and came to infect us
whether they’re old but newly released demons

a curse, a virus or parasite
whose goal is to undo us all
–don’t listen to those who say otherwise

for we’ve connected such fervent individuals
to the sudden rise in terrorist acts
against institutions, states and the world

And please, please, please, if you can
don’t hesitate to spread the word
–they’re here and you might be one of them.


—AJ Dalton