Vagabonds Vol. 4 Issue 1

9 Starts with quoting scripture & verse to justify evil: If it offends thee, pluck it out?

September 15, 1963: a well-worn, dog-eared bible with flame-seared pages, a child?s shoe gleaned from the smoking ash & rubble of a blown-up church.

Starts with patriotic hand to heart & bold-faced lies: . . . the man gathered 11bodies, including those of four girls younger than 6, & set fire to them?

Trouble, When they least expected the hate that is synonym for collateral damage: A means to an end: The 75 lb. cotton-gin fan barb-wired to a child?s sunken corpse.

Starts with designated victim of acts of God, Texting as they stroll mindless into traffic, the latest Smart-phone as secular talisman.

Starts with the same old souls with the same old hungers & fears The same old thing over & over, crack-head addiction with the same results: The advance of Progress bleeding a Trail Of Tears & the ?Peculiar Institution?

With its legacy of in-just-us written in the verbs of Citizen Picnics & clenched fists, Reservations. The internment camps & Guantanamo Bay. Trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of the world, but most often, Passing ghost-like through metal detectors, ever arrogant of dissident heartbeats; Originates With the judge who issues a warrant for the three-time DUI, the silhouette of wolf Emerging from the dark beyond, but never showed in court? starts a stitch in time That goes awry: A smoldering purse discarded on a highway shoulder, An abandoned work boot with tied shoelaces lying in a pool of congealed blood.

Always, the rescued survivors, the victims, who stopped for a moments rest, The ?Thank God Almighty? that starts the trials of Job.