All has become a boggy black bitterness thick with infectious insect swarms: the headlines, the subheads, the first graf and the last. All of it.

The smirking vice president at the Kennedy Center amid boos. The head of Homeland Security in western boots, tight jeans, dark mascara and a scornful frown.

All of it.

The under bridges and the viaducts awash in the unhoused, forgotten and forfeited to the forward march of crypto and trinkets of tin from the 5 and dime. Shun the rhyme. Take your time.

None is left anyway.

All has become black bitterness.

Fear is a password to freedom, we’re told. Take it or leave America behind. Your country or mine. Who knows anymore? We receive the news as it is created, without thought, reflection or introspection.

Without bitterness.

Insects swarm in the swamps of stinking sinking subdivisions where we feast on bologna sandwiches and the muscular, thick meat of chopped tongues conversing in glossolalia.

All has become black bitterness.