Ambient noise in Joplin, the new normal.

Heavy is the hand that holds this poison pen
and I wonder if I can even bring myself to write this out.
Where would I begin?

        The sound?
           (ten thousand freight trains on top of us
            all at once
            punctuated by screams and breaking glass.)

    Or

        The smell?
           (natural gas and electrocution
                dust and death.)

No.
I'll start at the end
    where I say I'm just happy to be alive
        but not mean it.
        Because really, that isn't it at all.

There's a term for this.

    They call it
        Survivor's Guilt.

    I call it
        I can't walk out of my house without
        witnessing destruction.
        I live in a war-zone, documented by
        X's and O's spray painted on the remnants
        of what once was my neighborhood
        next to numbers advertising
        how many bodies lie within.
   
    And why not me?
    What did I do to deserve life
    and how can I live up to it?

So call it what you will
but the fact of the matter is
I can't drive down the street
without tears in my eyes.

People with cameras throw around "Rebuilding" metaphors
    like dirty bills at a strip club
        then disappear back to their
            in tact towns
                to forget what they've seen.


    There is no rebuilding.
    There will be no "return to normalcy."
    There is only debris and broken dreams
    as the death toll climbs each day.


Sirens and chainsaws
    are ambient noise.
        This is the new normal.



      Pray for my town -
            no hope lies here anymore.