[Split Eight]

while riding a trolley in San Francisco, you notice an uproar of people running towards the trolley-- screaming...
as the car is leaving, the walls are heaving,
as if by instinct I grab for the stock of the M14 &--
empty air clasped in fist. cold sweat... dabbing drips.
my mind has emptied into its own bag of tricks,
every setting, blending, synthesized a disastrous mix-
PTSD is nothing like you read about.

the rain, seemingly receding now,
descending, the trolley interweaving with the crowds,
emerged. the sound of birds. wait, beeping & traffic lights.
my appetite for sound's inert. Surroundings blurred,
bleeding into my mask's confines. Picturing the thousand words
of my regiments re-imagining of what we'd been to
proud to serve. This evidence seems to crack that dream
that we'd pounded firm-- with impudence, with sticks and shit,
shouting curses at the listless shifting of the Ghaza's dirt, its inability to
bound the world we'd detached from // shivering like a mirage's sheen.

It was like we never left, until bombs besieged.
Fabric of reality, lit with shrapnel and hot debris.
Burnholes in this anthem and words switched in song,
I can believe in whatever world that I want
until the world proves me wrong