I’m honored today to see my satirical essay, “I Am Going To Drive Drunk Tonight” appear over at Winedrunk Sidewalk: Shipwrecked in Trumpland. You can find the piece right here.
As always, thanks to Editor John Grochalski for allowing me to add my voice at Winedrunk Sidewalk!
DC Comics.
New York, H. Holt and Company.
One tongue is silent, Prospero,
My language is my own;
Decayed Gonzalo does not know
The shadow that Antonio
Talks to, at noon, alone.
— Antonio’s refrain. from W. H. Auden’s The Sea and the Mirror
Photo credit: By Kenny Louie from Vancouver, Canada – Form, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24336137
To a Friend Who Unfriended Me on Facebook:
Sorry I employed the Socratic method to deflate your position and illustrate for the world how poorly you conceived it. I’m also sorry I posted evidence on your wall that vividly contradicts your argument. Finally, I’m sorry that I made fun of your spelling and grammar.
Get smarter, #$%^&*@#$%^&.
Sincerely,
Eric Robert Nolan
“Carnage-ized” variant. Marvel Comics.
what stars I find will usher me,
the moon will beam camaraderie,
what winds will wind around my ears
will bend to answer for my fears.
between them, all the endless space
will draw eternity to face
with vast and reassuring mien
the quandaries of the unserene.
here, the shade of me will mark
a figure in the violet dark.
all the hilltop consorts know
identity’s illusion, though.
let starlight penetrate my skin,
the moon expand to let me in,
the winds, again, absorb my voice,
if retrieval be their choice.
— (c) Eric Robert Nolan 2020
By Jeremy Bishop tidesinourveins – https://unsplash.com/photos/wtEO1tLeNQwImageGallery, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=62203699
DC Comics.
And suddenly he thought, I’m the abnormal one now. Normalcy was a majority concept, the standard of many and not the standard of just one man.
Abruptly that realization joined with what he saw on their faces–awe, fear, shrinking horror–and he knew that they were afraid of him. To them he was some terrible scourge they had never seen, a scourge even worse than the disease they had come to live with. He was an invisible specter who had left for evidence of his existence the bloodless bodies of their loved ones. And he understood what they felt and did not hate them. His right hand tightened on the tiny envelope of pills. So long as the end did not come with violence, so long as it did not have to be a butchery before their eyes.
Robert Neville looked out over the new people of the earth. He knew he did not belong to them; he knew that, like the vampires, he was anathema and black terror to be destroyed. And, abruptly, the concept came, amusing to him even in his pain.
A coughing chuckle filled his throat. He turned and leaned against the wall while he swallowed the pills. Full circle, he thought while the final lethargy crept into his limbs. Full circle. A new terror born in death, a new superstition entering the unassailable fortress of forever.
I am legend.
― Richard Matheson, I Am Legend and Other Stories
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 