On the Democrats, or Down with Will Rogers Thought

 

“I am not a member of any organized party — I am a Democrat,” comedian Will Rogers spoke these words almost a century ago. Back then it was a tongue-in-cheek good natured ribbing of a party that had just come out of a convention that required 103 ballots to nominate a presidential candidate. Yes, you read that right. In 1924, the delegates to the Democratic National Convention had to vote 103 times to nominate a man who would end up losing in a landslide to Calvin Coolidge. At least the Democratic Party of that era could contain its chaos to one gathering every four years. Today, the party’s disarray is on display 24/7. It is disorganized at every level of government and jurisdiction, at least where it can manage to get elected at all.

I know. Out of the Democrats’ recent defeat, a thousand think pieces have bloomed. Yet, most of them seem to ignore the essential issue Mr. Rogers' diagnosed a hundred years ago. They would rather focus on that nebulous term “messaging.” Among other issues with this analysis, it makes one crucial mistake: it assumes the Democrats have some secret message that they keep failing to deliver. They are otherwise unified and organized and at the same time forgetful of what needs to be expressed.  If only the Democrats could just put the right words together, the America people would fall over themselves to vote for any name with a donkey next to it. Extending this logic further,  maybe the Democratic Party can make a game of it, sending every American a decoder pin so they can figure out the “messaging” of the next election cycle like Ralphie in A Christmas Story.

All of these postmortems focus on messaging because it is convenient for the people posting them with their bylines attached. It requires no deeper reckoning with what the last two hundred years of the Democratic Party’s disorganization has led to in the present. They are also in line with the class interests of those who write them. On a personal level each one of these authors is hoping that their specific diagnosis will pique the interest of the party so they can get a gig consulting for it. Beyond that, on a more philosophical level, it helps to justify their whole line of work. Since they make a living trafficking in words, they have every incentive to promote the idea that a political party’s fortunes are tied to matters of vocabulary.

But the problem cannot be reduced to messaging while the party is such a mess of contradictions. We have seen that anything promised by one wing of the party, gets shot down by another. Or the so-called Parliamentarian gets to reject this and that proposal (you remember voting for them, right?) The Democratic Party has too many competing factions whose interests cannot be fundamentally reconciled. It is the party of billionaires and unions, landlords and renters, peaceniks and neocons, tree huggers and frackers, Zionists and Muslims, Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter More. In short, the Democrats are trying to serve both Mammon and the masses and failing at both. Any attempt to salvage the Democrats has to begin with meeting this problem head on.

Of course, contradiction is nothing new in the Democratic Party. At certain times the party managed it for a generation or so. They did it after Jackson and then after FDR. But these partisan constellations were only able to do this for two critical reasons. First was the opening of new economic frontiers that allowed competing groups to get a cut of a growing pie. Second was the lack a national issue that could divide the coalition. Eventually both of these advantages ended and the Democrats fell apart. In the case of Jackson's Democrats, they were undone by the very national issue of slavery. For Roosevelt Democrats, their coalition collapsed from the pressures of confronting racism and war in Vietnam.

It seems unlikely that the Democrats will find themselves in such a fortunate position again. The era of free real estate is over and the era of free refills is coming to a close as well. As for national controversies, the Democratic Party can no longer sidestep these. Politics in America have become homogenized thanks to TV and the Internet. Take, for example, People running for school boards. They are no longer focused on the picayune details of lunches and bus routes. They run on the red meat buffet of culture war issues such as transgender rights and so-called historical revisionism.

For the Democratic Party to win in these conditions, it has to reinvent itself. It has to become a party that either Will Rogers or his present incarnations cannot make fun of for a lack of unity. Think about it this way: if the Democrats were a serious party with long term goals, Trump's people would have been running their own version of ads warning about a "Democrat Project 2025." Or 2029. But of course, they did not. And will not. This is but one small piece of evidence the alleged party of the people needs to reorient itself in order to fight the rightward lurch of the country. Because what is at stake is more important than which gang of politicos holds office. The installation of a complete oligarchy is at hand. 

Unfortunately voters have been presented with few choices to stop this. The Republicans are the party that will make this transformation happen on purpose. Meanwhile the Democrats of the current cycle have become the party that will let it happen. Whether on purpose or not, the effect is the same. What kind of Democratic Party (or any party for that matter) would be better suited for the challenge of the day? The answer is predictable if you know me, but I do not care. The best version of the Democratic Party is one that has a solid base in the multiracial working class and is built around their representative organizations. While there will disagreements here and there in this model, at least this party will not be haphazardly built on top of known and active political fault lines.

Now for my most controversial drop. The historical and current iteration of this Democratic Party, amounts to little more than a rent seeking entity. It is run by a consulting class that inserts itself between activist groups and the avenues of power. Those who want to improve conditions for labor, minorities, women, or the environment have to go to this party, hat in hand, and beg for them for promises of change. As a result, those who run the current donkey show demand increasing contributions of cash, political labor, and votes when a simple majority is claimed to be not enough. 

It is helpful to compare the trajectory of the Democrats with the Republican Party, a party that fears its activists and works aggressively from election to election to enact its agenda. Whether they win or not is not the immediate issue. Commentators have rightly noticed the aggressively ideological character of today's GOP, though what they fail to remember is that the party was created as an explicitly ideological project. Of course that free soil, free labor, and free men ideology is in no longer in force among Republicans. Nevertheless, there was a clear political objective at one point and it echoes through to the present day. Today's Republicans have learned from that era. They have a party setup to deliver specific results. 

Know this. Unlike the Democrats, the Republicans can point to a specific time and place (1854 Ripon, Wisconsin) when their party was established. They can also explain what led to this event, the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. But what do Democrats have? A party built on various patronage networks, unifying urban sachems and rural courthouse gangs. It is a party that was founded by Jefferson, or Burr, or maybe Andrew Jackson, or quite possibly Martin Van Buren. It was not even consistently called the Democratic Party during all the times of its apparent founding. 

The Democrats of that era, the Democrats of Will Rogers' day, and Democrats of today have tried to pretend their messy big tent approach to politics is a secret strength that allows everyone to somehow feel represented. It should be increasingly evident this is not working. Creating a big tent in American politics ultimately leads to a sideshow, with figures like Manchin and Sinema gumming up the works. A real party with actual aims would be able to discipline these prima donna types, or better yet make sure they did not feel at home in the Democratic Party to begin with.

As it stands, the Democrats are awakening to see themselves restricted to coastal enclaves, a handful of cities in the interior, and the Black Belt in the South. Former strongholds in the Rio Grande Valley are going red, along with the rural upper Midwest. Appalachia is completely gone and if the Democrats are not careful they might start losing New Jersey in presidential and senatorial races. In the face of these changes, a complete structural reorientation is needed. The party needs to become a new kind of machine that is controlled by working class organizations, mobilizing working class voters across race and gender, to delivers real change to all working class Americans. 

Or the Democrats can continue on their current path. It is certainly easier emailed than done. Crying wolf to fundraise and waiting for the Republicans to screw up so much that it puts the Democrats back into power. Unfortunately this time around, if they continue with this approach they may find themselves joining the Whigs and Antimasons in the graveyard of American politics. Who knows what else they will take down with them when this comes to pass. Maybe a little Free Soil will be there to help ease the journey with Henry Clay Charon.  

 

On Comedy, Transportation, and Sundays

 

A brutally honest reply to an invitation to watch a friend's sketch show. Completely hypothetical. Thanks to Disturb the Universe. 

Let's Break it Down with a Poem About Tinder

 

(Not fro my phone, Wiipedia)

A poem of mine about Tinder is up at Jack Henry's site, 1870 Poems. Why not give it a look, then swipe right, as the kids* say.

*not to be confused with the kids in my basement

Ponder these Poems at Ponder Savant

This one's a doozy, five poems at Ponder Savant. They were selected for the theme "Still Shining." It's collection involving Arlington's Columbia Pike, Ticker Tape parades, and Plato. Thanks to Mia Savant for posting them.

New Year, New Poems

New year and new decade (the twenties start in 2020, don't @ me) Two poems of mine are in Sleet Magazine's Millennial Edition. The second one I wrote while taking the Empire Builder (pictured above).

2020 Candidate Roundup, Part I: The Great Democratic Party Primary & Other Excursions

Well folks, the clown car keeps getting bigger over at the 2020 Democratic Primary. If this trend continues, pretty soon there will be more Democrats running for President than will be running for the Senate. Good job, Chuck Schumer! It shows you that running for Senate has now become harder than President, otherwise O’Rourke would be trying to take out Cornyn instead of Trump. Running for President means you get to travel! You get to see the country! You get to go to Iowa! You are invited onto CNN for town halls! You get to live on a bus! When you lose you’re considered for a cabinet post, or ambassadorship! You might even get a gig on TV or a chance to sell another book! Lose a senate election though and what do you get? Obscurity.

Although maybe that’s changing with O’Rourke…

Anyway, there’s 24 candidates running with any real shot of winning. By “shot” I think it’s helpful to visualize a basketball court. There’s the candidates standing on a ladder next to the hoop and those right under the next. Then there are candidates aiming from the free throw line, as well as those shooting for a three-pointer. Finally you have people in the stands, who could in theory still make the shot. In total, there are 24 of these candidates in the primary so far. There are of course people running who have no name recognition at all, no money, no presence, no experience, and lack a decent website to boot. These candidates are too numerous to bother with.  They are beyond the court and outside the arena. There’s no chance of them getting the ball inside the net.

I’m going with 24 because it seems Steve Bullock and Bill DeBlasio are running. There’s also people have said they are forming exploratory committees but haven’t filled out that final ream of paperwork to “officially” say they are in the race. Regardless I’m putting the number at 24. That’s who I’m going to deal with in this blog post.

24 candidates, sounds crazy, no? Well, yes, this is a rather large batch. What’s surprising is how little separates most of the people running. The number of White moderates (Dr. King’s favorite people) is extremely high. I guess that’s par for the course. That’s who the party treasures and nurtures, telling them they represent “the real America” (wherever that is). So why not run for president then, since you represent the heartland and you bleed apple pie?

However we can’t let these MWGs (mediocre/moderate White guys) make us too cynical about this field. It does include the most diverse crowd of candidates for either party to date. Several minorities are represented for sure: African American, Hispanic Americans, LGBT Americans, Asian Americans, and Jewish Americans (and no, I’m not going to include Native Americans for Warren). We also have a record number of women running, who in fact, are not a minority. I know that may surprise some people, given how women have been historically excluded and oppressed, but rest assured it wasn’t because of a lack of numbers.

In terms of experience, there’s diversity too. We have gurus and governors, senators and Silicon Valley tycoons, and Congress critters and Mayors. I think that’s good. You don’t want just a bunch of senators, or a group of governors on the stage, because the problems facing this country require action at all levels. So feedback from a local state, house and cabinet perspective is good. Now, that doesn’t mean all that experience is the same and that everyone on the stage should be president if they’ve been in government for years. Only that a little perspective could be welcome.

That said, the debates probably won’t provide us much discussion, or any real debate. It’s not that I’m bemoaning the end of some golden age of public discourse, only that there’s too many people on stage for anyone to say anything of note. If everyone running manages to qualify, there will be 24 people up on the dais, and how much time realistically will each one of them get? Realistically how much have anything to say too? Perhaps we’ll get the first Twitter-style debate. Each candidate will only get to make statements and respond to questions and attacks using 280 characters or less. The jabs and jests might be worth it.

One thing that will have to go is the audience. First, because they’ll have to make room for all the candidates. Second, the candidates will just end up playing for an audience reaction. That’s how the lower-tier ones will try to get to the front of the pack. The Trump strategy. If we have to have a debate (personally I think the Town Halls should just be enough) then let it be someplace without obnoxious hooting and hollering.  Part of the reason Trump was able to dominate in the debate was ability to manipulate the audience and their reaction, even when it didn’t agree with him. That and his ability to use an air horn .

Will the debates be a make or break moment for the candidates? Undoubtedly, they have to be. If a candidate wants to break out from the lower tear of no–names and has-beens (and those who have never-been) they have to speak out and say something, or forever hold their peace. That should make for a little entertainment. The real interesting thing to see is who has already given up on the White House and is trying to position themselves for a VP slot, or a spot in the cabinet. There will be candidates who go after Sanders in order to endear themselves to Biden and the DNC. Watch out for them. Bernie will turn the Blue Dogs into snakes on that stage. Whether he’ll be able to drive them out of the party is another matter.

Then there will be those candidates who realize they have to go after Biden, since there’s no chance of them winning over Sanders voters, and because there’s no chance they’ll be on the ticket with him. Beto, Warren, and Gillibrand are part of this group. To a lesser extent, Gabbard is too. It’s highly unlikely Biden would want any of them as VP. Beto is too male and too White (and his youthful Punk cross-dressing notwithstanding, too straight). Meanwhile, Warren has feuded with Biden over the banks. Gillibrand could be selected, since she balances out the male at the top of the ticket. However, she represents a solidly blue state, can’t win over progressives, and burned her bridges with Hillary Clinton at the height of #MeToo. Her treatment of Franken also makes her a liability in getting the support of party loyalists.

Of course who ends up becoming VP might not have anything to do with the desires of the candidates. If Biden’s current lead collapses (a guy can dream, right?) and nobody has a majority of the pledged delegates, then some serious horse-trading will have to commence. Everyone wants to avoid a contested convention. It makes for great television and a terrible campaign. We haven’t had one since 1976, and the party who had it lost (although maybe shots of Tony Orlando dancing with Betty Ford were what really sank the Ford’s chances of reelection). At that stage it’s quite likely that one of the two front-runners will try to convince one of the mid-tier candidates to come on board and bring their delegates over. Otherwise, the superdelegates will get involved and when they do, that will further split the party.

That’s why if I had to bet on who will be VP, it’s going to be someone like Kamala Harris. Now it’s possible she’ll break out from her position in the current polling and start winning primaries. She’s relying on California’s early start to try and propel her forward with a homefield advantage. If that falls through, she could still end up with a decent pool of delegates that will be necessary to get a majority.  She will provide generational, racial, and gender balance against either Biden or Bernie, who seem to be the likely front-runners at this point. She would also provide a balance with Warren too, if she takes the lead. Harris provides a regional angle as well. The Democrats haven’t had a Westerner on the ticket since…well…really ever. The farthest west candidates have been from Texas or South Dakota.

It’s still too early to see who will be at the top of the ticket. Biden is certainly polling in the lead but the debates could cut that down, especially as people realize what he was actually doing before Obama nominated him for Vice President. Remember, Biden ran twice for president on his own merits in 1988 (before AOC was even born) and 2008. Each time his campaign went nowhere. The only person who likes the real Biden is Biden. For everyone else, it’s either misplaced nostalgia for Obama, a desperate desire for normalcy, mistaking Biden for a meme, or thinking he’s in the middle of the party when in reality he’s on its right. By himself, he’s completely unappealing. Who knows how long his campaign can keep up the illusion that hides the real candidate?

There’s also no telling what will happen in the news between now and the primaries, or what will happen during the primaries as well. Party shenanigans could cause issues with delegate allotment. Plus the instability of Trump means a foreign intervention or a recession that throw a wrench into things. It’s hard to say who benefits from that sort of situation. If we invade Iran, Venezuela, North Korea, or all three, it could make an explicitly anti-war candidate look better by comparison. It might also entice voters to try and put someone more stable in office for its own sake. A recession might lead the party to support someone with a business background, then again, our current president has such experience and look at Trump’s legacy of unnecessary tax cuts, feuding with the Federal Reserve, trade wars, and subsidizing coal plants.

On the other hand, a recession could make the party faithful see red, in a good way. Not in a let's bail out the banks one more time kind of way. Again, a boy can dream.

Big Windows on the World

A surrealist, post- or pre- or sub-apocalyptic vision is at store for you with my latest published poem, "Memorial Park," available for reading at Big Windows Review. I think it's the first poem I've linked to that involves sports. Hence the new label "sports," or as the rest of the world calls them, "tags."

Tomorrow night's there's a reading in my neighborhood, Ditmas Park. Okay, technically the read is in Kensington, but the spirit of the series is Ditmas Park. It's tomorrow at 8PM at Hinterlands (they have no website, so just Google it). Mermaid Witch Joanna C. Valente will be reading.

New Degenerate Work at the Metaworker

A poem of mine about the Rock and Roll lifestyle is up at The Metaworker

Oh, and I forgot, TWO NEW POEMS at DEGENERATE LITERATURE 

My Poems Bring All the Boys to the Literary Yard

Three poems are up at Literary Yard. One is about transgressive language.  The next is about the Millennial Generation. Finally the third one is about...well...I don't really know. ENJOY!

Bad Liquor Pond

A poem of mine, Bad Liquor Pond, is up at a new Baltimore based publication, Vector Magazine. There's some interesting work in it, including a version of Guess Who for Millennials, by John Durovsik.

Sometimes I forget where I get my titles from. Has this ever happened to you fellow writers? Especially poets. Place names and dates are usually self-explanatory, but sometimes you come across an old title and you have no idea how you came up from it. Usually I can place it to the Bible, Shakespeare, Pound, or Ginsberg. In this case, I must've been listening to this band while writing the poem in question.

It's a Poetry Discount Blowout!

Thanks to the wonderful Sophie Moss, I've got five poems up at Dirty Press. It's a British invasion, or an invasion of Britain, or maybe just more of a skirmish, or perhaps cutting in the queue. Yeah, that's probably more like it. Or being rude in a tea house. Some of you from Northern Virginia may recognize the title of "The Four Courts." Those of you from Ireland may recognize it as well and think it refers to you too. That's okay. It's all one big circle of self-referential meaning.

Unknown Words With Ben Nardolilli

Hello everyone. I've got a new medium to share with you. SOUND. Matthew Anderson was kind enough to interview for his podcast Unknown Words.  Sit down, pour yourself a stiff one, and listen to me here.

Chemical or Biological Attack

New poems are up at POTLUCK and Rasasvada. Enjoy!

Louis H. Berman of Annapolis, Maryland Is an Idiot

Sometimes I read a letter to the editor at the Washington Post and suffer a minor attack of apoplexy. Unfortunately since I cannot go to a doctor for a cure and the apothecaries are all closed, I must turn to the next best substitute for leeches: a blog post. Louis H. Berman's letter here, buried away in the paper like a hateful jewel, is today's culprit. In a few spare paragraphs, Mr. Berman asserts the following about what's wrong with the Millennial Generation and while he spouts nonsense, in the process he reveals what is most wrong with the United States: namely that we have become a country willing to believe the most absurd and malicious lies about our fellow Americans. In sum, this is Mr. Berman's "argument:" 

1) Millennials are spoiled and lazy 
2) This is the fault of the Baby Boomers 
3) However, the reason for high unemployment is still not their fault.  Even though they were not in charge of Wall Street when it wrecked the economy, blame falls on the Millennials instead.
4) There are plenty of jobs for Millennials but they are too spoiled to find one. 
5) Millennials are supposed to "learn something" from their parents (who spoiled them in the first place) about what being in a real workplace means. 

I think Mr. Berman needs to go back and actually read the classifieds and want-ads some time. Sure there are plenty of jobs, but many require several years of experience and a decent portion of what do not are unpaid. Try looking for entry-level work Mr. Berman as I have, for multiple companies, in several fields, in different cities. It might be better than just talking out of your ass to tell the damn kids to get off your lawn. Now, you may claim that the Millennials are just too spoiled to take minimum wage, which was supposedly good enough for the folks of your generation. Remember that minimum wage was good enough for all of you because it was higher. A minimum wage job today pays less now when adjusted for inflation. Also, you may not know this because higher education used to cost a lot less, but many Millennials have college debts and need to earn money so that they can pay them off, debts they incurred in the first place so that they might not have to work for minimum wage all their lives.

I'm going to be generous Mr. Berman and assume you are not being motivated by spite, but rather an adherence to the just-world fallacy. In your view, unemployment is high because people are lazy and spoiled, especially young people. I hate to break it to you (who am I kidding, I enjoying enlightening you), but there are not enough jobs to go around. Roughly speaking, there are 3.5 unemployed people per each of the much vaunted job postings you discussed. No matter how many skilled people apply for a position, they are not all going to get it in this economy. The same applies even if they all decide to take minimum wage jobs. Have you been following the news? 44% of minimum-wage workers have either attended or graduated from college. I think we can safely assume they are not waiting out for their dream job. Their dream job is having a job. Mr. Berman, these attacks on a generation are a red herring, especially when you consider long-term unemployment rates among the Baby Boomers. But I guess they must be lazy and spoiled too, because of how the GI Generation raised them. 

This economy sucks. Period. Blaming the unemployed does nothing except possibly make you feel like unemployment could never happen to you. You seem to view joblessness as something that only exists for other people who must have done something wrong. Mr. Berman, this is a fallacy and an insult to the millions of formerly hardworking Americans who have been laid off in the past few years, and all the Americans of all ages, races, creeds, and classes who want desperately to work. Many of us loved our jobs before we lost them. Many of us have taken what we could find in the interim, only to lose those jobs as well. Many of us are the victims of discriminatory hiring practices that make it difficult for the unemployment to get work. Many of us graduated in the middle of a terrible market and could never get a leg up. Many of us have put having families on hold. Many of us have put owning a house on hold. Many of us avoid seeing our friends and family out of poverty and shame. Many of us go to bed every night praying for either a miracle or to be allowed to die in our sleep. 

And here Mr. Berman, is where I am going to engage in the same kind of attacks that you have, employing (see what I did there?) both the ad hominem and the gross generalization. Now, I am not doing this because it helps my argument, but because it is fun. You sir, are a dumb asshole. Unfortunately, you are not alone. The audiences of the GOP debates were filled with your ilk. You do not have any facts to back your assertions up, relying instead on worn-out narratives that have been applied to every previous generation. Despite setting yourself up as some sort of expert, you offer no real solutions to the problems you decry either. You lack any long term vision and fail to grasp the structural issues we are mired in. On top of this, you are callous. You are mean. You are judgmental even though your previous ignorance shows you have no right to claim any sort of capacity for judgment. 

Now if you were smart and an asshole, you would at least have enough self-interest to be worried about the true causes behind the problem of persistent unemployment because it affects you. Instead of spouting off against the usual suspects guilty of the usual sins, you would have some intellectual curiosity about several real solutions. If you were dumb and kind you might not grasp the nuances of the situation, but you would at least have nice things to say to those who are suffering. Of course, it would be best if you were both smart and kind, but I am willing to settle for the other two options if it keeps you from writing another letter to the editor at the Washington Post ever again. 

I Don't Wanna Be a Manchild

I'm starting a side project that you all can read about and follow here. Enjoy. Anyone who wants to swap links, I'm down.

Apparently I was Wrong

Okay, I was wrong. Notice, I avoided writing the first thing people my age tend to say these days when in error: "I lied." I didn't know I would be proven wrong (in a good way), hence no lying took place. My Millennial Generation, take note. Lying means you have willfully evaded the truth and told people something was the case when you knew otherwise. Then again, can we be blamed for not knowing what lying really is after Nixon, Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush II? Anyway, it turns out I have another poem to share before the ball drops on New Year's. It is up at Dark Chaos.

My Contemporary Voice

Five poems of mine up at Contemporary American Voices. One is a friendly Jeremiad, another is part of my series The Personal Ads, one comes from my endless mornings spent at the Lyric Diner (give a shout out if you know what I'm talking about), one is based on an experience with my main man David Henry Sterry, and another comes from wandering the development out at National Harbor.

“I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by brevity”

I recently read an attempt to create a Howl for my generation. I do not make the allusion myself, the author set it up so, with a single word title meant to juxtaposition with Ginsberg's poem. So comparisons can be made, the point of the poem in the first place. Doing so, one sees that it has its moments but it is no reincarnation, only a parody. However, it was not as good a parody as reading The Waste Land by Orson Welles. "Tweet" does not make it new, as another poet known for his use of homages would say.

I think it may have suffered from the formating of the website. Such a work needs space for the words to breathe. But mostly, it falls flat not in its diagnosing of the problem, but in its referencing. Instead of Ginsberg's use of his friend's adventures and his own intellectual endeavors as a source for an epic, Miller's work reads like a laundry list. It is in need of eyeball kicks and more skillful use in condensing.

These sorts of things have been written before. I remember reading a different one that was about the yuppies. A direction adaptation and twisting worked in this case because it was meant to comment on hos a generation had sold out, or at least refused to carry the flame of challenging assumptions. A Howl for my generation, to be taken seriously, requires a different sort of indignation and rage. It must tell the tale of us not destroying ourselves, but our being witnesses the self-destruction of everything around us. It must deal with how our birthright has been lost. I think it is fitting to consider ourselves a sort of Generation Esau.

Above all, the interesting thing is how Howl, a poem that was as free as any verse could be at the time, has now become its own form. Poems come from it, they have the same structure and make the same stops. A series of expectations is built into the nature of the references, how they are voiced, made, and changed, if indeed they are changed. The process starts right at the beginning. What minds did the author see, and how were they destroyed?

Lines Scribbled on the Gate of Hell

Two poems of mine are up at the Hell Gate Review. One is entitled "When the Rain Comes" and the other is called "The Millennials," a shout-out of sorts for today's generation of which I am a part. I prefer that term to Generation (or Gen) Y, unless you want to say Generation Why? But that's not much better. The "Millennials" has much more of a, well, millennialist tone to it.