Musings of JR Simmang

I'm on Facebook, and Instagram, and Twitter. Guilty as charged. I toyed with the idea of removing myself completely from all social media, but all my friends with whom I don't see face to face on a daily/weekly/yearly basis reeled me back in. But, there are things posted on The Face that can't be unposted. There are thoughts and opinions, and angry swipes and pessimistic turmoil. And it got me thinking about things, which can be dangerous. There's a new (perhaps it isn't new) trend that's floating around social media. It's the act of painting all people of one particular set of beliefs with the same brush. It's saying that since one conservative believes being gay is tantamount to murder, since one liberal out there believes that being pro-life is treachery of the highest degree, then all people of those beliefs must also feel the same way. Which is what brings me to my point. We have become too conce...

Uttered wasteland, a pile of garbage tipping the points like mountain peaks… perched on top a pop of color, vaguely in the shape of a Boeing 707. Once upon a time, it found purchase on a desk, perhaps the landing a little too rough, and was handed to a fist; sent to the end of the world with only one passenger. -JR Simmang

I. who began their days with their feet to the fire and lept to the skies without anything but their shirts and their jeans who left the morning light in favor of the bright fluorescent scathing rabies of ceiling tile torture that left their skin molting like little caverns and cages who stuck out their chest, emaciated and prolonged, only to beat the breath from their lungs and be so goddamned proud that their children were going to be less emaciated and perhaps even one day find their stupid little trinkets and give them up to charity who deftly defied the 9 to 5 when they really worked the 6 to 10 and only after the humdrum blue glow of that soul-devouring seraphim tripped a circuit breaker did they finally pour themselves a drop of scotch to stave off the hunger who let themselves stay hungry so that others could eat, never realizing that if they dried up and withered the fruit they bore wouldn’t be as sweet, who toiled their fingers and twirled their tongues and held sign...

It’s as if we’ve forgotten what it was like to built a fire together, to gather around the heat and let the stories spill from our hearts and impart the wisdom of our ghosts to the ones who needed it most. It was in that first flame we became the same, for the fire melted our admonition and left behind the admiration of the story in the flame. The heat was wondrous, and its divine surplus filled up through the woods just like the words of our fathers. We listened then, and when the fire demanded we were commanded. We hoisted the piles and smiled our smiles as we carried the wood to the flame. Yea, as time flew on, we saw the dawn. The sun brought a new age of impotent rage. This fire we shared couldn’t be compared to the brilliance of the sun. How then, when the moon brings all too soon the biting cold, and winter too bold, will we sing our tune? The sun will return, perhaps that will spurn on our blessings, clothe us in new dressings (whe...

-An Abecedarian Able-bodied and blushing amid concentrated masses of desiccated corpses emulating the flocks of golden eagles that wend and whinny through haunted houses, impotent rage silently jousts against the kinesthetic sphere. Lock-step and mesmerized, no one seems to notice the pressure rising quickly against our raw-ridden sides. Our transition from ubiquity to violently reviled has been welcomed by the xenophobic sitters. Yet, we have faltered, shrunk, and our Zittau has become our zero.