The lights flickered again and we laughed about it.  I wondered if they were flickering up the street at the house.  The kids wouldn’t notice in the unabashed chaotic joy of a sitter.

Our kids were, for the most part, unaware of the war or the occupation.  Of course, they seemed more aware of it than the majority of the grown folk sitting round us.  The lights flickered again but Badu didn’t skip a beat. Another high end restaurant, a facade, built on a failing infrastructure. Flooded basements.

For me, a great deal of it can be traced back to Horselover Fat.  While my contemporaries were jacking off to Ayn Rand, I was reading VALIS and running needles through my flesh to feel something, anything.

The Empire Never Ended. 

Fat, through divine chance and laser beams began to see Roman facades superimposed on Southern California streets.  For me it’s Vichy France, fascist occupation, that I see strewn out through the city of Detroit.  The strategic expansion of Vichy shops, Vichy restaurants, and the shutting off of water to Black women and children.  Buckets to the river.

My wife’s eyes were lit up, she was glowing, the wine coming on as we talked.  Only special occasions would bring us to a place like this in times like these.  I was attentive to her but also tuned into the energetic and aethyric flow.  Gazing throughout the room I thought I saw a Robber Barron, one of the  wealthy Nazi collaborators at the bar.  The lights flickered again. I glanced at my wife and laughed, looked back and he was gone.