JOHNSTONE

One point I will always adamantly insist on is that it’s entirely possible to live a joyful and exuberant life in the midst of this abusive dystopia.

Reading by Tim Foley.

"I mean, it is a bit rich watching a BBC reporter act shocked and offended by somebody saying they think Jewish lives are worth more than Palestinian lives."

Reading by Tim Foley.

"I don't do politics" means I support genocide. It means I support war. It means I support injustice and exploitation. It means I support ordinary people getting poorer and sicker while the biosphere dies and the billionaires turn into trillionaires. It means I support our headlong plunge into mass extinction and dystopia.

Reading by Tim Foley.

They're trying to make us worse. These billionaire generative AI corporations reap profits by making us worse human beings.

Reading by Tim Foley.

We can make a home here.
In these ruins.
In this shattered civilization
full of walking autopsies
where every twinkle in the night sky
is an Elon Musk satellite.

Life can still thrive here.
Even in the Anthropocene.
Even in the middle
of secular armageddon.
There is still moss
in the cracks of the parking lot.
There are still pigeons
roosting in the rafters.

We can make a nest here, too,
out of the plastics and the packaging,
out of the shell casings
and the trillions of chicken bones.
We can rake it into a pile
and lay listening to the ghosts
of the extinct megafauna
and get haunted by the spirits
of the forests that used to be.

It is good to breathe deeply
of the fumes of this wasteland.
The air still crackles
with strange and crooked sorcery.
The earth is still packed full
of winking Buddhas
inside winking Buddhas.
He wears a hazmat suit these days
(he's not an idiot),
but you can still see him winking
in the iridescent petrol puddles,
and in the shopping cart saints
on the wounded sidewalks,
and even in the shark-eyed stare
of the war pundits on Fox News.

Did you know they've discovered
a type of fungus in Chernobyl
which feeds on the radiation there?
When I first learned this I fell to my knees
and wept tears of wonder and joy.
The water poured from my seaweed head
and washed cigarette butts
down the gutter.

We are swimming in an ocean of miracles.
We are living on a giant cocoon.
We have barely begun
to scratch the surface of this world.
Every moment is a leap
into the great Unknown.

I kneel before the black mold in Chernobyl.

An angel egg is beginning to hatch.

_______________

Reading by Tim Foley.