In Georgia the summer storms play multiple-choice, ninety-degree weather flirting with one-hundred degree weather, decides it wants to soak baking pavement to make constant smell of hot asphalt rising. That cooling that rapidly sets torch like parking lot to glacier cold from a blistering intensity. That kind of hush of the loud heat that silences the baking. But only in torrential downpours that beat rain drops on rooftops as if angry fisted policemen on unsuspecting doors. And a crack of thunder, even before the first mist of rain mystifies, before the sprinkle ever sprinkled before even a puddle was produced, rumbling as though hurricanes were just unruly neighbors that bothered the coast. Just before, during, just after, sunshine resumes its occupancy, evaporating mightly little rain rivers, giving the earth no vacancy for moisture, evaporated, and people believing they are able to go back to normal, put back umbrellas about to be purchased because they were either tourists or forgot the seasonal micro storms that spring up in summertimes.
On Facebook, the political deluge is constant folly, a team of under bridge monsters, trolls, type out speedily at shotgun blasted speeds, and spread shot across emotional dynamics that can cascade, ricochet and penetrate into the hearts of good, indifferent, and bad peoples. For purest of purposes a storm can brew, be hijacked, poisoned and redistributed, packaged in good intentions to be swallowed down, ingested, absorbed, till paranoia, and fear fight like mongers, demanding attention, granting the wishes of a ruling party, a ruling class. This perfect storm hits intensities most dire in election years, in those cycles when leaders are crowned, or dethroned, when the fate of tomorrow is decided. But the storm isn't new, the damage has created efficiency, the levees are cracking faster, the sandbags useless as coded messages are sent out and streamed, downloaded, uploaded, tagged, shared, and screened. Human error leaving gaps, false information overtaking this stream like invasive species.
In my head, a swirl of emotions, dread, panic, hope. Something that meshes together like boxed macaroni and cheese, the nutrients keep me going, but not much of it is useful, its bagged in a flavor pouch of baby powder substance, adding milk for fattening, my pores are bloated, my mind is jumbled. Not even exercise can exorcise the excess from my mind. Thoughts are never spared, my mind rapidly jumbling messages of importance, what's the biggest danger of the moment, disinformation, confusion, lack-of human decency. When the storm came I was bowled over, but I dug heels in hard to push against man-made wind machine, cheeks rippling at miles per hour that most of us will never be able to calculate on this cyber super highway mess, collision, bumper to bumper, moment to moment conspiracy, news, lies, and half-truths. Trying to lay bare some information, but the message is misconstrued. How long do you row, who do you know to throw life lines too as the world is flooding, does it matter. Keep my mind on me and mine, that's what some say to do, but I know we're connected, a line of dominoes, teetering on collapsing and taking it all down.
