That Special Something

<p><em>That Special Something </em>is about ideals and compromises aspirations good-faith efforts and the specter of futility. There's ample grief but with apologies to Robert Frost there's also ample grievance for it is in grievance that the gods allow more latitude for humor. What sort of humor? If you took a Vanitas/Memento Mori painter converted such into a poet made it so that the perspective shifted to include more flora and more animals more waterways and beer more cracked corn and more longing for the father more references to weaponry and xenia more fretting since collectively we're so much closer to the end you'd have the sort of gallows humor that prevails here. Yet there's poignancy. There's beauty. There is joy. It's like the death's head on the cover a reminder of the obvious of the impending simplification. In the meantime we are free to take a smoke to be surrounded by as many flowers as we can to grin as though we really don't have anything to lose. </p>