Tornado Watch, Washington D.C.
We’re not accustomed to this kind of alarm
on the coasts, heavy weather being something
one reads about, mostly in the past tense—
after damage is done in parts of the world
we don’t bother knowing much about.
The sky has assembled like an army: furious
clouds in formation, cruising past the horizon
like commuters watching the clock, late
for meetings and too busy to hear our world
speaking in ways language never could.
The Empathy Adjustment
You’re seldom as vulnerable as the moment you’re pulled over on the Baltimore-Washington Parkway and assuming: this can only be for speeding because what else could I possibly have done before the sun has even had a chance to rise? And yet, circa 2022, maybe the Police have added Thought to the Crimes they convict and if so, you’re anything but innocent or free from opinions about, say, attempted insurrections, and former presidents whose continued outrages metastasize like the blackened marrow inside a steak left out overnight, or the blinkered fascists who covet nothing more than enforcing this new world disorder. All of which leaves you here, wallet in lap, hands compliantly placed somewhere between 10 A.M. and 2 P.M. and the normal considerations—being white, male, and completely sober—not assuaging this intense if possibly irrational dread, as fear ricochets from the heart to the gut then the brain: a chain reaction of gruesome scenarios heating up your head. In short, you’re scared shitless, especially after the man in black wordlessly takes your license and registration, then walks back to the patrol car. Serve and Protect is the mission statement, obvious for all to see, but let’s face facts: maybe you were driving faster than you realized; maybe some prankster or gangster stashed a brick of heroin in your trunk; or some computer glitch in the mainframe wrongly identifies you as an enemy of the state to be arrested on sight. Or perhaps this cop is just having a bad day and the ability to give you a bad life, effective immediately. It’s at this moment, at last, when the established coping mechanisms abandon you and you’re almost prepared to pray, which means it’s officially a crisis: you’re helpless to stop the empathy reset and, at last and once again, it’s on: you find yourself feeling sorry for the times you didn’t stop and listen to your wife when she was acting hysterical, or the fights that ensued when you told her—against every flashing internal alarm—to just relax, or your daughter was obsessing about something irrational and you were less than the person she needs; the same person you needed at her age and often found in short supply, having grown up in a time where anxieties and vulnerability went unacknowledged, pushed deeply inside with a pile driver—and speaking of that sound, why not acknowledge how unjust it is these road crews stand around (much less do work) in the rain or heat or snow, their office toilet a portable shit box that shudders every time another car blows by, at speed. These thoughts continue at twice the rate of reason, not in any danger of ceasing, so it’s a divine sort of intervention when the officer eventually returns and not only keeps his gun holstered, but hands you a ticket (no, a warning!) and reminds you not to hold your phone while you’re driving in traffic. Finally, this fever breaks, and you could almost kiss the same leather boots he uses to kick in doors and arrest illegals (in your mind). Free at last (you think), driving away the relief surges, converting the angst to adrenaline and you’re ready to forgive everyone, including yourself, for every trespass, rededicated to reconciliation. But before that you need to feel bad, again, for the blue-collar folks endlessly fucked by the system, and the white-collar cretins who love themselves less than the rules they impose. Not to mention all the animals who thrive or die, alone, in the same struggle (except for the bees and ants, who must acquire profound inner peace or at least the absence of thought that accompanies their instinctual coding). And what about the gal at Nathan’s Famous who’ll have to serve the angry fatso a foot-long with extra onions at a recently renamed rest stop on the New Jersey Turnpike. And the angry fatso as well, because there has to be a reason he’s angry and perhaps a better reason he’s obese—genetic disposition or the consequence of a society obliging us to stuff ourselves, fortified for the fight of our lives. Blinded by the golden light of these revelations, let’s also offer a blanket absolution for the exploited suffering amongst us, and (why not?), even the movie stars with more money than sense, or the retired athletes watching their fortunes disappear the same way God does when hurricanes and earthquakes swallow entire cities. And neither last nor least, God himself, who is likely looking down at all of this, wondering if this extreme weather bringing fires and drought is a consummation of his own anxiety attacks, some kind of comeuppance as he beholds this world and wonders if it was worth all the work.
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