If They Hit the Magic Decibel the Whole Building Will Lift-off

• There is a coworker whose cube is four feet from mine who we fear                                                                          . I've been advised not to write about it, call me!
• Someone at Washington Post tweeted that Biden has decided to run for POTUS. The tweet was almost immediately deleted, and no announcement seems imminent even if one seems, um, inevitable. An insignificant gaffe, that tweet, but it made me more despondent and defeated than all other non-events in this motherfucking POTUS combined. And then this Hall and Oates song started playing in my head - what does it say of me that I immediately felt better?
• Yes, I owe you links:
• How to disappear completely.
• No Man's Land.
• The future sucks.
• I myself dabbled in pacifism.
• I don't have a problem with my atheism.
• Portrait of the Person-Guy.
• On measuring our future.
• No-thought zone.
• Consequences of the Canadian election.
• This week in water.
• Where do dogs come from?
• My favorite owl.
• I don't hate Hall and Oates. Forgive me.
• Found my dBs cassettes last night looking for something else. The tape didn't snap on any of them when I tried to play them because I don't have anything to play cassettes on. 

THE UNIVERSE AS PRIMAL SCREAM

Tracy K Smith

5pm on the nose. They open their mouths

And it rolls out: high, shrill and metallic.

First the boy, then his sister. Occasionally,

They both let loose at once, and I think

Of putting on my shoes to go up and see

Whether it is merely an experiment

Their parents have been conducting

Upon the good crystal, which must surely

Lie shattered to dust on the floor.

Maybe the mother is still proud

Of the four pink lungs she nursed

To such might. Perhaps, if they hit

The magic decibel, the whole building

Will lift-off, and we'll ride to glory

Like Elijah. If this is it—if this is what

Their cries are cocked toward—let the sky

Pass from blue, to red, to molten gold,

To black. Let the heaven we inherit approach.

 Whether it is our dead in Old Testament robes,

Or a door opening onto the roiling infinity of space.

Whether it will bend down to greet us like a father,

Or swallow us like a furnace. I'm ready

To meet what refuses to let us keep anything

For long. What teases us with blessings,

Bends us with grief. Wizard, thief, the great

Wind rushing to knock our mirrors to the floor,

To sweep our short lives clean. How mean

Our racket seems beside it. My stereo on shuffle.

The neighbor chopping onions through a wall.

All of it just a hiccough against what may never

Come for us. And the kids upstairs still at it,

Screaming like the Dawn of Man, as if something

They have no name for has begun to insist

Upon being born.