D e b o r a h   M e a d o w s

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Waving the flag of self in a grand adventure, the film version employed people who have survived the war.  It perpetually happens in someone else's neighborhood, told in an authentic voice.  People are backdrop material, cruelly part of the set design.

The imaginary animals we might encounter in the woods are never met; they must persist unshot and unskinned so the edge of fear stays sharp for times that seem we'll never make it out.

Both self and sibling advance in age but are never released into a state of dignity or freedom as if a trap had somehow been set with the tools of emotion itself.

Yet if it's to be a sort of compensation, bonus points for enduring a stone dropped in one's reflecting pool, then one may come to seek a surface disturbance out of perverse resistance.  The story reinforces that these are ideal arrangements and all shortcomings are individual; something is wrong with you.

You have refused marriage offers and a king's ransom as acts of self-retardation that keep you going back to the primary class.  There, astride a pumpkin, you must complete a repetitive task over and over until the spell is broken by an atomic bomb.  Be assured that the focus is on You, glorious You, because you're an American.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

So it came back re-varnished with synthetic materials that weren't
even manufactured back then, no less the sappy version of us and them.

When most of your adult working years fall, shadow-wise, after
             the setting of that era, how could you resist watching
             the abandoned baby nightly?

Some thought we could return to the wild
             even though people in this state
             outnumber deer four to one.

Rumor had it they worry about the excesses
             of that practice.

By then, they had killed off the guy who took account
of the day's lengthening shadows calibrated to
             his interior states.

Freaks of nature were used to illustrate "heroic" accomplishment
             and presented as objective coverage.

We learned to de-magnify most of this because
             it's just where we live.

The way things were going to be from now on,
the loss of belief that the magic animal could
ever be sighted; entrance to the too-small
room means we'll hunch over in order
to fit in every day.

You couldn't leave well enough alone,
you kept fussing with it, and now
look at it.