New Education Standards Aim for "Apocalypse-Ready"

In the face of multiple scientific reports released within the past decade predicting the end of Earth as a viable life-sustaining planet unless drastic environmental measures are taken, a small group of educators have formed a coalition to rework the Common Core State Standards to ensure that upon high school graduation, all students have the knowledge, skills, and mindsets to be "apocalypse-ready".

"At this point, the current emphasis of the CCSS on nonfiction literacy, evidence-based argumentation, and mathematical communication will only prepare American graduates to succeed in the real world for another 50 years at best," Joreen Crandall, head of the coalition, was quoted as saying. "Once our continued consumption of non renewable resources and other economic activities push Earth past its ecological equilibrium, our students will be faced with an entirely different set of challenges from what k-12 schooling is currently preparing them for." Instead, the coalition is focusing efforts to compile and standardize skills and content such as makeshift weaponry, in-group/out-group psychology, and prolonged cannibalism as rigorously as possible. "As our ozone layer nears complete depletion, I feel confident that these reformed standards will ensure that American children survive the devastating onslaught of solar flares at 3, 4, maybe 5 times the rate of Japanese and Finnish children." Crandall added, "We hope to outsource the corresponding standardized assessments to Pearson Education."

To set a timetable for the completion of the new standards to be on par with the rate of environmental decline, the coalition has been monitoring reports released by various Earth Systems scientists. Most recently, researchers published findings showing that four of nine natural planetary boundaries for sustaining human life have already been surpassed. As of press time, the report's national online site had received under 200 pageviews. The EPA could not be reached for comment.

Multiverse

This journal entry dated
fourteen years back
doesn't sound like me,
but I remember writing it.
The sloppy half-script arises
from wavering dedication
to the subject;
my sarcasm was so blunt.

Dog-eared by pretty,
the journal with a red floral border
and a white decanter on each cover
is a coffin of sorts.
Once, 11-17-97 was
the javelin tip of
my blood, flesh, and breath.
Today, it's but a scale among scales,
a measure among measures,
curled up as tightly as its brethren
nestling in perpetuity.

I can't quite put my finger on
this relation to a past self -
the present is so seamless,
while history's iterations
unfold like paper dolls
linked side-by-side.
The devil on my shoulder wants
to ask do we know her?
Sure, we shared some memories
but - that's not who
we are anymore. After all,
Descartes wasn't
because he thought.

But the angel pipes up
he was no amnesiac either.

I think
I must be an illusion.
Truth is, I don't know
if pulling on the thread
will just unravel this
whole damn pattern.

Liminal

What microbial thoughts
reside in the seams of each day,
overlooked and fertile,
driven by a force more primal than will?
As a child, my mother taught me
how to crack open the bones
that lent her hearty soups flavor.
The smooth, gray, curving armor of each rib
split easily from end to end,
its splintered edges offering up
the soft marrow residing within,
the medulla ossium ruba,
an interstitial secret
bringing warmth to our daily needs.
The same warmth pulses
within the recesses of the darkest nadir,
the deep of the Mariana.
Her fissures are the conduit,
umbilical cord to our molten Heart that sustains
and attests, "Revelation comes in not a flood,
but a trickle."
Wednesday afternoon -
these days are preset, each hour
molded by the heavy hand of intent.
Interwoven are the minutes,
mere and precious, between purposes,
between points, undefined,
when suddenly
I am in the primordial state myself,
thoughts teeming and subliming,
luxuriating in the richness of free-form,
until the rift
closes up again.

Season Poems

Season Poem 1: Fall

Some days in autumn,
the season is tugged along by
strong gusts whose fingers catch in the foliage,
and loosen leaves that have ripened to a rich red,
or yellow like the soft peel of an apple,
speckled like an egg

on tempestuous afternoons,
clouds roam across the celestial plain,
the herd kicking up a soft flurry that touches down
on our faces, heavier than mist

morning arrives in the gritty leftovers of a storm.
With the rhythmic cadence
of a cat's tongue against milk,
wandering sandals
slap the ground's grainy detritus
onto dry soles
in search of a daily coffee

the slate of the sky reflects each
slick slab of asphalt that
daily collects another layer of the shedding season,
a tessellation
of the reds,
apple peel yellows,
and the specked eggs
that march on until November.

Season Poem 2: Fracture

There is a time of stripping away,
when we get to see
the structure underneath.

In spring,
the spine of each leaf
lengthens
and bisects, lengthens
a bit more,
and continues to split
and elongate at a snail's pace
until it is broad like an open palm
and ridged like a coastline.

In fall,
the retreating crawl
of lush coverage
reveals the spidery lattice from which
life sprang,
months ago -
knobby fingers are hardy as
veins in an infinite cycle,
begetting capillaries,
always birthed from arteries,
thicker than water swirling
in a subtly numbered,
dedicated loop.

I can't say
it doesn't bring me to tears
to see nature's ellipsis camouflaged
against the cloak of each season,
as summer beats slow,
lub-dub shuffle drags long,
like tree branch shadows
at noon in winter.