I can’t stop thinking about that volcano

in Spain right now that has displaced

almost 8000 people.

I’d try not to think about if I could,

but each time I change the station

in my head I envision an autistic boy

with his back to me playing at

a computer at his desk,

an autistic boy trying to distract himself

from the crawling, dry fecal matter in his

soiled pants that haven’t been

washed for who knows how

long, so I go back to that volcano

in Spain. I don’t know, maybe I’m

just disgusted with the lack of

compassion I’m seeing in the world

and want to throw a tantrum

on par with the size of that volcano,

flow down over my embankments

and wipe out any property in my path

like a karmic reminder that nature

has its own ideas about taxation.

I tell myself something oblique

in association and content, and also more

in line with the apperceptive mode of

cognition, like maybe my dilemma has

something to do with how, when my

father was alive, he used to turn his back

to me whenever I asked him about mom.

Excuse me, I’d say, and then he’d turn

back around and pretend it was an accident

that he ignored me. Except accidents

don’t continue to happen. They happen

once and happen hard, and always

leave destruction where they were,

leave destruction and some newly

regenerated ground through which

new growth can come through, and this

is a lot like how I keep my ego and its

laundry list of disappointments in check

now, I want to say. But then I think, you

would say that, being like both an

angry autistic boy, and a volcano.