The Button

By Michael Tapia

It has been a year since I last published. Over the year, the world continued her search for eternal youth but still there were new stress fractures, signs of aging, and a moodiness in knowing. No solace found in the passing days. There were greater storms, floods, fires, tornadoes, droughts, and oil spills. Continuing unseasonal weather changes, even slight shivers, earthquakes, or late freezes. One could argue that it was all natural and nothing new. Yes, one could argue and indeed we did argue as we have for years. One could argue that there was nothing new in our arguing, while others could argue that the there was no purpose in the arguments. Like someone discovered building a bomb in the basement, deny, obfuscate, cover your tracks. On the verge of pressing “The Button.”
These poems are some of my buttons, some plain and direct and others have a slight flourish. Though these are usually more internalized buttons and, in some cases, even with a touch of humor as in “Lingua Franca.” They hold together an ensemble, like buttons in a sewing kit or buttons on a control panel, carefully laid out and labelled, the big red one has a cover to prevent being accidentally activated. In the end, the question remains, “If you could push the button, would you?”
Or perhaps, for the nostalgic types, like the buttons on a jukebox, selected with care, bringing emotions as the record spins and spins, slight pops, and crackling. Five selections for a dollar, like B-17.
Would you push the green button, enter Telesterion? Or perhaps the blue button, “Not Enough,” “Did you think it was enough to simply cut yourself...(?)” Like the Wurlitzer, polished, multi-color and inviting and all you need is the correct change.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Michael Tapia
• Release date: Nov 28, 2021
• ISBN: 9781005892968

Michael Tapia

Born and raised in San Antonio Texas. Retired from the USAF as a Russian Cryptologic Linguist. Had tours primarily in Germany, with six years in Berlin, Germany. Graduated from University of Maryland overseas division, B.A, A.A., Community College of Air Force, A.S.

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Table of Contents

Preface

The Button

Lingua Franca

1954

Lovefest at the Capitol 1/6/21

Dual Moons

January Man

Not the First

It Takes a Village

Gossamer wings

Lunch on the Veranda

August 14, 2021

The Delta

A Safe Vessel

World Capitals

Empire

The Fault

One More Time

Expensive Words

The Tailor

Getting In

A Walk on Main Street

Of the Sky

Jeffersonian Ideals

Entering Telesterion

Enduring

Not Enough

Waiting

Land of the Tall Ones

While the Children Are Raised

Too Long

The Button

Copyright ©2021 by Michael Tapia

CI-435695204

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No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the author.

This Book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

Publisher: Cicada Cadence

Preface

But sometimes everything I write

with the threadbare art of my eye

seems a snapshot,

lurid, rapid, garish, grouped,

heightened from life,

yet paralyzed by fact,

All’s misalliance.

Yet why not say what happened?

Robert Lowell, Epilogue

We are a far cry removed from the lamentation of Robert Lowell. With the disintegration of authority, where everyone’s point of view is valid, it is no longer a matter of simply saying what happened.  When it is possible to deny facts, present an alternate scenario, details that never existed and have it accepted as reality. This results in an untenable reality. Indeed, all is misalliance.

What is the resolution to this quandary? Are we simply at the point as the early Greeks were with Sophism, unable to deny the argument but knowing that it served no purpose to benefit society?

The Poem, The Button, asks

If you could push the button, would you?

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