Tag Archives: politics

2026, Day Book, essay, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, the no-scape

Does Anyone Remember the Creepy Lawn Jockey from Season 2 of the X Files?

I go back and watch shows with an obsession. I don’t know why. Lately I’ve been going back and watching Mulder and Scully. Sometimes I miss the skepticism and paranoia of my childhood. An odd turn of nostalgia at that, being a child raised in a world in which the infrastructure was crumbling and being repaired with Hubba Bubba and Brillo Cream caked prayers.

But you miss little things the first time through, watching for the plot. Like Lawn jockeys; just an odd transition shot that had nothing to do with the plot. The lawn jockey was about establishing tone, true; the Caucasian face paint was starting to chip off and was meant to make us think about zombies. But you could argue that it was almost a non-essential shot. A little extra little taste from the director. A little wink and a nod, darkly funny. Lawn jockeys could make any trailer a royal compound, right? Like adding Greek columns to an old row house and turning it into a bed and breakfast.

It reminds me of the first time I drove back by the house I grew up in and saw that the new owner buried wagon wheels at the end of the driveway/ Like they rolled up from after some long journey, wrapped in gingham and a dream, and dug the foundation themselves, when all they did was buy a 40 year old ranch style house and paint over all the memories in western kitsch. The unknowns and barely knowns have been painted over with a new, thick paint of certainty. The color is a colorless gray, and reflects nothing.

Underneath, all the old memories rest on the drywall and frame, preserved like fossils against elements and the passage of time.

[Day book 2026 / Spring 3.21.26

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Mick Parsons
Mick Parsons
@rivercitymick

Poet. Essayist. Fictioner. Steamboat fireman. Bit of a grackle.

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poetry

Armageddon was born in America (2 poems)

[Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.28.26 and 3.4.26

2.28.26 [On the news we started another war in the of God]

Woke up at 6 with the dogs, let them out and rummaged around for their breakfast,debating the finer points of wakefulness and coffee or more sleep. Scrolled the outside world and learned about the new war: one more conscription writ in blood to maintain an empire that was never meant to be. Let the dogs back in, gave them breakfast and fresh water. Climbed back in bed, because sleep and comfort are fleeting

when the bombs are flying.

3.4.26 [Notes from Baltimore on the second coming]

People forget Armageddon 
was born in America. It's in
all the stories, buried deep
waiting to rise again
when fervor needs whipping up.
There is no redemption in America
without a Tribulation and when
John Nelson Darby started singing
his Pre-Tribulation song, Joseph  Smith
was rubbing magic rocks
and dreaming of Utah 

around 30 years before the Civil War
when it was possible for a man 
to attend church Sunday day
and abuse slaves Sunday night 
and call it all the Kingdom of Heaven.

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2026, Day Book, everyday words, Ohio River Valley Literature, Poet's Life, poetry, prose, psychogeography, the no-scape

Daybook 2026 // Winter 2.26.26

I relish the days I wake up with a cleanish slate. All I want before I first open my eyes is to feel her next to me. Around her, my entire geography takes form and becomes. And then the words, and then the noisy insistence of the day, the dogs, the words, one foot and then the next foot, finding glasses and on to coffee and tobacco and words. The world, the world, fast and faster, slow and slower, becomes and unbecomes, folds and unfolds

before the machinations
interfere. But that
is rare.

I feel for her to make sure I’m still waking into the same dream. Always the sensation in my limbs, the vestiges of dreams incomplete when the body has enough, when the mind that is me today decides to drive the body machine. The static from the back of the brain tunes in like an old radio dial, finds a station that rings clear and all I can hope for some days

is that it’s a song: The Beatles or Lucinda Williams or The Bangles or Stone Temple Pilots or Lita Ford or Joe Strummer or [ ]

and not some news reel
that will bleed horror in the lens
before I even get my coffee and my first smoke of the day.

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