The Bad Year
by Ken Wheatcroft-Pardue


In the bad year,
that no one will ever speak of ever again,
the walls were blue & words meant nothing.
People would talk & it’d come out like puffs
of dank and dirty smoke.
And no one could look anyone in the eye.

The media were filled – as always –
with beautiful lies that no one,
I repeat, no one believed.

Dogs did not bark.
Birds refused to sing.
It was as if the world were a cartoon
and the artist, maybe because of lack of time
or, why not, just pure laziness,
had forgotten to add color
and those magic cloud-like balloons.

Looking back, I don’t know
how we lived through it.
I guess, we didn’t know
any better.





x

Copyright © 2024 by Red River Review. First Rights Reserved. All other rights revert to the authors.
No work may be reproduced or republished without the express written consent of the author.