A Softer Society

I have learned to use photopea and I am about to make that everyone's problem | Updates Fridays

[asoftersociety]

Listen, sugar. This ain’t my first rodeo./(Actually, don’t tell anyone, but it totally is! And it’s really fun so far!)

[asoftersociety]

I used to think/being intelligent was enough.

[asoftersociety]

Why I Find Green Plaid So Annoying, And What I Intend to Do about It: An Explanation of My Heroic Actions by Constance Contraire

For one thing plaid’s hideous, a pattern cooked up

By dimwit designers who must have been mad

It’s also perfidious(a word I looked up—it means lots of different things, all of them bad)

Why, it’s nothing but lines! Lines and more lines!

Not one single curve! Not one polka dot!

What monstrous minds could have called these designs?

They ought to be caught and tied up on the spot!

But worse, even worse, is the fact that it’s green,

The color you turn when you’ve eaten a bug,

And all of the gross and nasty things I’ve ever seen,

Like pond scum and slime molds or that horrible slug,

All covered with fungus out in the backyard

That I saw Tuesday night right before I got sick.

No matter how hard I have tried (I’ve tried hard)

I’ve never seen green things without thinking, “Ick!”

So what can I do? There isn’t much for it

If I’m to get rid of this hideous sight:

If green plaid I hate (and I do abhor it)

Then action is called for! A battle! A fight!

I must free the man who has been held

Behind prison fences (that crisscrossing plaid!)

Long covered by so much grass green it’s a veld!

I must free this man who will soon be my dad!

(For if he’s my dad, with him I’ll be seen! So away with this plaid, and good day to this green!)

Lovely rendition of our resident doggrel poet!

[asoftersociety]

I wish there was a better word/than ‘sorry.’/But then I’d probably need a better word than that.

[asoftersociety]

I want to just disappear/and have wild adventures/if only in the imagination of the people I left behind.

[asoftersociety]

I want to learn to fight with knives/to hotwire cars/to cook for myself.

[asoftersociety]

I read bowling pins like tea leaves/every pin I knock down is a boy who'll break my heart/and I always bowl a perfect game

[asoftersociety]

Sure, confiscate my grappling hook./Arrest me if you have to./At least I know I tried.

[asoftersociety]

I want to learn to fight with knives/to hotwire cars/to cook for myself.

[asoftersociety]

I write myself notes, reminders,/”Johnny is the tall one.” “Burt is gone.”/”What happened in Vegas, has to stay in Vegas.”

[asoftersociety]

I want to just disappear/and have wild adventures/if only in the imagination of the people I left behind.

[asoftersociety]

I used to think/being intelligent was enough.

[asoftersociety]

I'm afraid to go on this mission, afraid of sabotage, of system failure/but when I tried to tell my mother/she smiled so wide and said "my son the astronaut"

[asoftersociety]

We pass on/the skills/that saved our life

[asoftersociety]

I used to think/being intelligent was enough.

[asoftersociety]

I used to think/being intelligent was enough.

[asoftersociety]

I’m terrified I will meet my clone/and treat myself/the way I treat everyone else.