As I was walking all alane,
they came to me,
and they were very well,
their upper lips beaded
with Tamiflu,
their bodies dressed
in tactical gear,
and I hummed for them
their Reveille song,
and though I hummed it
strengthlessly,
they saw I had learned
their songbook,
and they came to me,
and they were very well,
and they showed me their woods
where one of them carried
a pillow on which a bullet lay,
and which he shepherded
toward a mountain
of colorful plastic,
high-density plastic,
a veil between
their world and their heaven,
and we watched
from a safe distance
so as not to jeopard
our persons,
and we could see
the bullet, as it rode,
was practicing mindfulness,
and the bullet was very well,
and in its mindfulness,
regarded itself
as a layered, delicate,
folded thing
like the whorl
of the cabbage rose,
and the bullet on its pillow
travelled closer
and closer
to the mountain,
beyond which nothing
could be seen or heard,
and when the pillow struck it,
the bullet fell backward
into the earth,
and the child placed it
on the pillow again,
and carried it back
through the woods to begin
the journey once more,
but now, they said,
let us go to the surf,
and we watched the last
very colorful weapons
coming ashore,
but briefly, for each
made a partial retreat
into the water
then came ashore
again, recurrently,
solidly, cool and inert,
their chambers and barrels
filled with sand,
and they who were very well,
who could open and shut
their wellness on command,
they agreed I, too,
could dress in their tactical gear,
and attend their reenactments,
parties, parades,
and mass-crowd events,
and they told me
they liked my smell
of the cornfields,
and thereby sugars,
and thereby fuels,
and thereby plastics,
and thereby poisons,
and thereby weapons,
and if you believe
this is the comic tale
of an erstwhile prophet,
I tell you then
a tiny hammer
was put in my hand,
and I was directed
toward a sturgeon
who had also washed ashore,
and it was understood
I was to bludgeon it
as it barked
and made its wound
in the sand, its eyelids
and jawbone moving
and suffering, and elsewhere
unendingly dreaming,
and with every blow I landed,
the children appeared
more willing to uncurtain
the apparatus
they had hidden from me,
each of the blows
somehow turning its engine
as I struck precisely,
and not without spirit,
and those they considered
deathblows sent
a single Davy Crockett hat
down the machine’s
conveyor belt,
the first of which
they gave me to wear,
and which looked ridiculous
with their tactical gear,
and yet I saw
I was admired
by the smallest among them,
and this was their dream,
that I would join
their ranks, but they knew
there must always be
a penalty
for their dream,
so the youngest was taken,
and pulled from the crowd,
and pressed between clamps,
and shaken, and shaken,
until he became
the size of a thumb,
and then he was secured
in a clear glass vial,
and tossed end to end,
and they passed him
like a contemptible object
to the eldest who placed him
under his helmet,
and we all went together
through a suburb of wastepits,
the misfed sheets there
rippling a little,
and the child in the vial
seemed to wave at this world,
waving shyly,
and did not stop laughing,
for being tossed back and forth
was a pleasure for him,
and we came
to a large soy field,
and, at its middle,
a steel centrifuge,
and the child was inserted,
and, laughing,
was spun inside it
until he was dead,
and it was explained
by the tallest among them
his loss would provide
a fresh, new wellness
for each of us,
and the numbers were run,
and the data was pulled,
and then it was printed,
and I was chosen
to read from the green
two-dimensional graphs
and pies, and I told them
about our grit,
our social awareness,
our regulation of feelings,
our growth mindsets,
our knowledge of suicide,
our progress with woe,
and in fact, we found,
most notably,
we were very effective at woe,
and therefore,
we were all very well.
We are effective at woe!
went the cheer,
and the vial was left to the field,
and we walked with our good news
back to the shore
in our tactical gear,
for it was what we deserved.

Photograph © Brent Schneeman