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Cookie Cutter Chaos

Jack Waters

Elitist minds hiding in a fa?ade of faith
Duplicitous factions feign to exonerate
Launch the oxymoron,
Pre-empted holy war.
Opposition claiming victory
While never checking score.
Ammunition fires to conquer future dreams
Armed with bullets, blasphemes, and bigotry.

In this cookie-cutter chaos
Thoughts free and unique, they hate us
Conform or take the next bus
Or await for social ambush.

Leaders and liars are feeding these fires
Extinguish the past, view the charcoal remains
Ashes scattered over the valley of dismay
What a mighty mausoleum, check back Memorial Day

Why use the blinded eyes
To teach of life and sight
Polarized and pigeonholed
A valley rejects the right

It’s a cookie-cutter chaos
In vain they loathe and hate us
Not reaching to their neighbors
Shows true motive in their labors

Urban Decay

by Meghan Wiemer

My town was established prehistorically
or somewhere back then.
We had a few animals
that did nobody any good.
We killed them all but the babies.
Now our town is much older.

Our first television was always set
to something laughably vulgar.
It was great!
And each year after the war
we got a new one!
But our stations turned into
knick knack shows.

Nothing in this town
can match the quality
of our dentist’s stucco office.
When our town got perfect teeth,
it was the beginning of the end
and the start of something gorgeous.

We all heard rumors of him:
the Wonderful Boy Wonder.
He settled in our town,
but then went off to war
and became that awkward
wheelchair, oh well.

Who told you it’s not true?
Our town is thriving!
Shut the door behind you
if you think you’re so smart.
It’s missing a hinge,
so shut it softly.

Our town’s idiot
found the growing spot first,
decided to put it up for sale
and made a fortune.

Everything became sterile.
We got clean
but got sick,
one right after the other.
And the skips and the shots
and the slides and the slips
that filled the dirty spots
made it impossible to stop
from being our reckless cool selves.
We were an Action-Cut-and-Fade
and goodbye town.