What we fear
Is so much worse than we can worry

O Coronavirus
Crown of RNA
Jesus in reverse
Iran can’t get the medication
so their citizens die
while pleading to a god that can’t listen
because everything is locked behind free will
Chaos has been set free
the world lives or dies by our whims
and in some ways they’re greater than God’s
in other ways less

never read news alone

give us our daily bread
doesn’t help much
when you already ate all of today’s bread
yesterday

courage often works like a credit card, not a bank
you just act
and the courage comes after the fact

the Bible makes more sense
in a world that is becoming more like it was then
where plague and pestilence stalk unimpeded
and governments don’t even fake caring
about the will of the people

when people tune in to the news
they are looking for a dove with a leaf in its mouth
but the way things are now
they just get a draught of salt water

a crisis brings people together
but a tragedy tears them apart

my faith has been a jack in the box, not a music box
the music only plays while I’m winding
I let go and it stops

the more complex a scientific instrument
the more data it needs to store
the more active a mind
the more baggage it accrues
and the more expensive a therapist it requires

i’m not one of the elect,
my brain is read-only
so it can’t get saved

you are a bird
the materials you gather in this life
determine the nest you lay in in your next

the further a rocket needs to go
the more correct its trajectory must be
the goodness of a society only really gets tested
when things go horribly bad

the flower that blooms in adversity
is usually fake

what you think are rays of hope
can sometimes be gamma rays
that fry you through and through

I swear to God serotonin is the elixir of life
I am burned out and fresh out of it

only those who feign strength survive
because so few really are strong!

COVID-19 is like a terrorist
who sets off bombs in the market
and at the funeral of those killed in the market
(in its case just keeping the funerals themselves
from happening)

in a tragedy only the strong survive
because the strong are fed the weak

where God is once the devil is twice
where the devil is twice God is once

being mentally ill during a pandemic is strange
for the first time the things in the wider world
resemble the things in our head

goodness in people is like the stars
only in great darkness do they shine brightly

the only good that comes out of suffering
is the good brought into it

those of us whose lives are already a tragedy
can’t handle a crisis