The Destroyer Hates Global Warming
The Destroyer Fights Gluten and Gluten Wins
The Destroyer Is Uber Afraid
Beware of the Destroyer's Candy Dish
The Destroyer Hates Global Warming
The Destroyer does not believe the end of the world should be like filling a bathtub from a steaming kettle. The earth is sponge cake set to cook without a timer. The Destroyer has confidence in humanity's quest to find the most entertaining way to bake, shock, and tear itself to pieces. He respects the Prius for its stealth mode up to cross walks and doing its part for a bloody Armageddon. The Destroyer chats it up in Whole Foods with like-minded recyclable sadists, extending the agony, the collective madness. He bathes in the smoke of the wildfires and coughs while pacing a hole in the fabric of all he holds dear. Activists sky writing their complaints can no longer be seen in the haze of these insufferable days. The Destroyer sometimes forgets the greater good in his passion for renewable energy and contemplates a world where his children thrive.
The Destroyer Fights Gluten and Gluten Wins
The Destroyer first thinks this battle is about vanquishing his stomach and later the allergist unceremoniously arranged by his HMO. The Destroyer later imagines it is about raising the roof over how nothing is free not even gluten free. He becomes convinced this trend is about eradicating an idea, or belief, that a host of villains is infecting every cell of the planet through carbohydrates. The Destroyer worries gluten is a neurosis that not even his panic room can keep at bay. He wonders whether his dreams of being a soldier scything through wheat fields might make him second-guess the intellectual debate and organic messiahs. The Destroyer thinks so hard he forgets where he stands when it came time to cough up dough for his children’s oatmeal. The most important meal of the day. The inevitable crumbling of will.
The Destroyer revved his hatchback as a teenager through snow drifts and stop signs, beery and depressed, ecstatic and eager to impress dates. Freedom was driving. His foot now taps the curb waiting for his makeshift cab, time approaching across a miniature screen like Pacman's ghost. The blinking icon in the windshield is a sign from some otherworldly deity, the single eye of judgment for a life struggling to shift gears. Freedom was. The Destroyer's children joke about how he pokes the apps on his smart phone like pimples, gross to the touch, unavoidable and terrifying to ponder. His love of libations leaves the imprint of a key in his hand, a tattoo always fading into a fist, middle finger or hitchhiker's thumb. Or maybe it was his beloved car lost in mist? Danger is a story told so often that the fear becomes real. Freedom? The Destroyer can never find the driver’s appointed pick-up spot and his only solace is that death will not easily track him down.
Beware of the Destroyer's Candy Dish
The Destroyer uses his hatred of expired medicine as an excuse to pilfer his friends’ out-of-date prescriptions while pretending to pee. The desire to lose oneself is more than the desire to go get lost. The Destroyer fills an ashtray that has never seen ash with pills in a random assortment like the candy dish in his parents’ living room. The competing elements of a dangerous buzz is like a torpedo left in the tubes of a submerged submarine. The Destroyer waits until despair climbs up on his back to have a chicken fight with the universe before dipping into his stash. If windows are the eyes to the soul, he fogs them up at family gatherings for added privacy. The Destroyer finds the random effects exhilarating during the workday, less so in rush hour traffic, dangerous on the dance floor. If his liver could talk it might sit him down over a cup of non-caffeinated chamomile tea and try to reason it through. The Destroyer is being watched by ghosts who could be future versions of himself or his own lost loves, the washed-out feeling of swallowing the past.
Martin Ott has published 10 books of poetry and fiction. His work has appeared in over 300 magazines and 20 anthologies.
