NVN Friday: EVEN GROUND
by tom bauer
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I was born with my teeth bared hunter-like and I chased the good life like it was a stag in God’s forest, chopping workdays like trees, dragging them back to build a family home and nourish new children with veggie stews, candles lit, our smiles in golden shadows around a table, but there was nowhere to hide, we couldn’t escape genocide. And never thinking, not once, it would be this neural energy, fluids heating the nervous systems of society like some mid-century reptilian brain, terror pouring out of mansions on hills, muddy rivers flowing, crashing great stones to earth around us, unable to hide because we hadn’t escaped genocide. I had the job, the car, the family home, I had built a life on plans, blueprints of hope, big dreams of a career being a star, but nothing I could do could stop a war, though I’d hoped there wouldn’t be anymore, no more bombs and the shrieks of dying kids, but I think we see there’s nowhere to hide, we cannot, will not, escape genocide.
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tom bauer lives in montreal with his sons and plays boardgames.