When people ask if you're weird, or tell you,
or want to believe themselves strange,
eclectic, or odd.
It's vaguely disgusting to me,
cringeworthy in a mild degree.
We think we're so different,
but we are not.
The individualism of people
should be and is comparable
to the individualism of ants.
Who looks at the anthill and
sees something in particular,
something behaving specifically
"uniquely"
from every ant and every anthill?
Why do you believe in yourself?
I see this, as a conversation about
depression, and your partner
does not respect you
but instead wants to
tell you how they feel worse,
or have it worse, or "understand" more
about the affirmation or situation.
A person looking for individuality
through a lens of misery, anguish, and sadness,
is truly alone in their minds, and missing the
reality that these depressions exist without them.
The statement, "you are not alone" is an attack,
or an offense to these people, because it says
"you are not as unique as you think",
it strips them of their identity and individuality.
This is true of many ideologies and affirmations.
I quit individuality, this constricting sense
of holding everything of yourself in center,
to be a drop in the whole, something fluid.
If you split your affirmations from yourself,
you'd see we're all the same;
Affirmations are just currents in the ocean.
I look at myself; and people see a man,
a radical feminist, and sometimes a musician.
As labels, these each have their own presupposed notions,
[especially, "man" or "male" in the patriarchal gaze]
which hardly, if ever, are true,
but as affirmations, when I consent to using them,
these are no longer stereotypes that constrain me,
but similarities that I realize
I can embrace or shut out in others.
Affirmations do not make me more unique,
but similar to more people.
If I remove these affirmations to try and get to my "true" center,
my purest form of self, I see I am without meaning.
This is why I quit Individuality.

Getting ready to play a video game
in a nice, not-actually-dusty-but-
has-the-comfort-of-dustiness-like
Booksto­re.
Maybe.
"Townhall free wifi."
That's just great. I mostly
just cry and complain and wonder
why dolphins are so optimistic as
to not just off themselves,
since they can consciously do so.
Free wifi though.
I mean, that's just cool.

Of all the super heroes who exist
like legends, or monuments in entertainment,
or essential cultural commodities,
and
my favorite is Moon Knight.
Never met a good reception.
Never had a particularly well done story.
I like Moon Knight in theory;
a superhero with mental issues,
with friends who face the moral challenge
of playing into his insanity,
versus helping him stop serious crimes.
It seemed like a social commentary to me;
why do we hate dictators, but love superheroes?
How is it we understand absolute power corrupts
absolutely,
yet also think having an alien demigod semi-rule the planet
is really in the best interest of our species?
The design for Moon Knight has always been immaculate
to me; directly representing the fallibility of the hero,
diving into the night with a decadent radiance,
he wears all white, and declares he enjoys it-
for his enemies to know he's coming.
Does it make sense? No.
Much like the Punisher, Moon Knight doesn't struggle with
being morally black and white, but does struggle with
keeping that identity intact. His eyes glowing,
no face shown... just darkness.
All the emotion in the world broadcast through
two glowing orbs. sometimes red, sometimes green,
often white.
A visual hint to clouded mind of Moon Knight;
Marvel's true Batman gone awry. Gone insane.
A failed son who won't die.
Here's to it.

I don’t think history is romantic.

I’m “American”; this means I’m unburdened

with having to be nationalistic or patriotic.

Don’t have to be prideful about hundreds of

years of ******* and mythology.

It means I might hate Bukowski,

but I find him way less repulsive

than Shakespeare. I had to stab a

pathetic sense of “spirituality”

[religion?] in a public place with prejudice,

to truly gain a sense of enlightenment in

pure hopelessness. Something like that.

I might be deaf to some other culture,

but I’m hearing megaphones in America.

The actors are outside smoking
and discussing ideas they only know
through fiction. I’m not amused.
I’m in a band that’s falling apart with wit,
and some not-eclectic, or odd,
but still strange type of grace.
There’s a message on the table when I get home.
There’s a piece of me that wants to be jealous.
I’m desperate for an escape.
I’m desperate.

It started with a pen,
and wound up in English.
No diction, addiction, or
ambition,
to get published.
“Don’t scream and you’ll look normal.”
Screaming “MISOGYNY!”
if screaming at all,
I’ve seen the great minds of
my generation
addicted to Adderall.
 
Some friends who get wasted,
and I remain sober.
Cheap ‘03 cars, yet,
no ones coming over.
 
Actors without work now,
no one with opportunity.
Suicidal crazies now,
crafted from 80’s and 90’s responsibility,
and A is for Adderall.
 
Sugar coated heroine,
designer drugs.
Poor blacks, whites, mexicans,
and asians swept under the rug.
 
“The father, the son,
the invisible hand.”
 
Crack in prisons, *****,
holy ******* in a BMW,
Feminism, becomes communism,
becomes atheism becomes you.
You so counter-culture,
you forgot about us,
“She’s not an angel friends,
throw her under the bus.”
 
Politicians in purple now,
blessed American royalty.
Slaughter the disenfranchised,
poor, socialist regime,
and A is for Adderall.
 
Don’t shoot the police,
shoot the children instead,
or send them to war,
but the war had to end.
“In god we trust, but
in the market we invest.”
So occupy Wall Street,
and get called a hippie,
or occupy college,
and become a dead beat?
 
In high school you’re told,
be what you will be.
Cancer is still a…
“…”
…Hereditary disease.
 
Actors without work still.
Politicians lying still.
Suicidal crazies.
Ecstasy filled crazies.
Counter-culture conformist.
Culture conformist.
Eco-terrorist.
Mindless consumer.
Junkies, addicts,
soldiers, students,
leaders, followers,
murderers, democrats,
conservatives, liberals,
republicans, child molesters,
sexists, racists.
 
No more labels.
 
It was every single individual.
Individual failure.
One by one, we were all found guilty.
You are guilty. I am guilty,
and
A is for Adderall,
and the new marginalized.

You are a ghost, or
a spectral anomaly;
Appearing out of thin air,
while I am 2 hands and 7 minutes
into a video game. You are
a haunt, with no teeth,
no fear, no presence.
Not particularly interesting.
You absolved yourself from
conversation with,
"Have fun with your video game",
to which I replied, "you too",
mistakenly.

I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want to get hit by a Mercedes.
I want to get run over by a Porsche.
Something big.
I want to get smeared against the pavement
by a Cadillac Escalade.
I want to get hit by one of those big *******
who drag gasoline across the continent,
but I want the driver to be a manic psychopath.
I want him to stalk me on the sidewalk
and then run me over slowly.
He's not any coward, not like those bald patriarchal
Corvette drivers in polo shirts tucked into khakis.
No, he's a great fat man, a hairy beast with
a crooked stare that slows the pulse on impact.
I want the police to cringe or get scared interrogating him,
and haul his truck somewhere to be inspected.
I want the price of gas in nearby areas to go up
by at least fifteen cents for two weeks.
I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want to roll over the windshield,
and drag under the bottom for about ten yards.
I want to separate at the middle and leave organs on his
left side view mirror and hanging on his hood ornament.
I want to seep blood deep into his car,
and when he turns on his heat,
he'll smell my blood full blast in his face
burning.
I want to wreck the car inside and out.
I want to get hit by a car with a McCain sticker on the bumper.
I don't want to get hit by some middle class Ford or Honda,
or someone's ****-level Chevy or beat up jalopy.
I want to get hit by a BMW.
I want the driver to make his tires scream like banshees,
and leave four long streaks of rotten burned rubber on the asphalt.
I want him to step out in business attire, and gasp, inwardly.
I want to flip off the sky, because my aim is bad,
and call him a coward for hitting the brakes.
I want him to think,
"What did I do?
Is he Okay?
What am I going to do?
What if I lose my license?
How will I get to work?
How will I pay for this.
Does my insurance cover
vehicular manslaughter?
I'm not alone right?
I'll get through this.
I'll survive.
I'll just be another statistic.
That's all."

Hate me for something I did.
Hate me for something I said.
Hate me because I wished something
ill upon you or your loved ones.
Hate me because I'm a vile man,
with a toxic personality.
Hate me for the hell of it.
Hate me because it's the weekend.
Hate me for trying to tear down
your religion or ideology.
Hate me for wearing pajamas to the beach.
Hate me for trying to wear jeans to a funeral.
Hate me for speaking ill of your favorite writer.
Hate because you spent seven dollars for a digital
copy of one of my **** CD's.
Hate me because I think your children are *******,
and I want to feed your pets to larger animals.
Hate me because I curse like a sailor.
Hate me because I don't cuss as much as I used to.
Hate me for being naive.
Hate me for being unsuccessful.
Hate me for breaking something important.
Hate me because I went limp during a ****,
and laughed in your face.
Hate me because I have no ambition.
Hate me because all I do is think all day.
Hate me because I'm a hypocrite.
Hate me because I half *** everything.
Hate me because I wander around town
wearing all black at midnight.
Hate me because I made you a promise
I had zero intention of keeping.
Hate me because I'm not giving you a choice.
It's either
hate me,
or

My Mom took me to the casino to gamble with her money.
Played video poker and roulette, and very well could have
just lit $80 on fire.
The casino was my Vietnam.
We sit down and order sodas from a machine
called "Fairies of the Forest".
No intention or idea how to play it.
Put in $20.
Press a couple buttons.
Won $140.
I think the laws of physics break down
under that ceiling.
Like Alice in Wonderland on acid...
or would it be more acid?

Did the effort ever hurt you?
Your fight for me;
it's like a second winter.
You only **** me with soft things.
You only **** me when you laugh and smile.
I hope all the flowers
that find your hands
may die. I hope to be
where the angels are.
God is dead,
and take me with you.
Like second winter.
Like being dead already.
Like the beginning of the end.
You only **** me
with soft things.

Woke up late from a nightmare
disguised as a daydream;
the mediocrity of life burning
at the bottom of my throat
from last night.
Failing organs and trying
to age gracefully
to keep dignity.
Dying every day.
Ten foot sunflower out back
like an anti-depressant that makes you ponder suicides.
Ten foot sunflower  can't find the light
but reaches out like there's something out there.
Ten foot sunflower can't run away, can't take the rain,
can't be desperate or in pain.
Ten foot sunflower has peace of mind through emptiness.
I woke up with canaries out my window
and broken organs in my head.
So, people tell me I talk too much,
and I find it hard to disagree.

"Sorry, Austin...not for us...Best with it."**

"Four Verses of Inexpressive Groaning,
and 15 Ughs to be Sung in Beethoven's 9th. "

Ughghghgh.
Ughyughghg.
Eighghghgugh.
Myeeeghghg?

Eeehghghg...­
Myegghghugh.
Ghghghghg.
Huhhghghg?

Sigh. Sigh. Sigh.
Shrug- eh?
Uhhhmmm...
Eghghghghg....

Myughghghg...
grughghghg.
Gaaah...­?
Blughghg.

Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.

You know, I never met a Frank I really hated too much,
except for when I was little and I despised
my ******* grandfather for threatening to
nail my ears to a door every forty minutes.
Having said that, there's a hole somewhere where
people vacation from life and I haven't found it,
but the closest I can get is bed.
I woke up with half my *** still asleep.
I hurt somewhere new every day.
But hey, it can't all be **** coffee and half wilted daisies, eh?
I got my copy of "Eaten by Machines; Collected Poems of Austin Heath."
Look at that.
My word in print.
I'm not making a **** cent off of it,
but there it is. I'll call myself a writer now.
At least out in the open.
Among people.
Sigh.
What if further on down the century,
people decide these years were the first
seeds pushed into the dirt that would
start the apocalypse?
Or, what if we are already the post-apocalypse?
This place smells funny.
What if the past heard about the future,
learned about all the wealth and resources we had
at our disposal, and instead built fancier weapons
for the war machine?
Would they even hesitate to call us monsters,
and declare the future the end?
What the **** do you think we're looking down?
We're all going to go insane,
and **** each other in our sleep,
and we'll sleep rarely because we
realize that it is one big
unprofitable blind spot.
We'll die half-narcoleptic, insomniac, lucid dreaming lunatics,
with manic paranoia and no conscience for violence.
In our sleep.
Sleep.
I can't quite remember why I left bed,
I guess I needed more sunshine in my diet.
My phone is off, it's past noon, and I haven't eaten.
Frank is disappointed.

-Light up a cliche under a streetlight
while singing "the Star Spangled Banner"
and receiving oral from a trans-woman.
-**** in the drive-thru of an Arby's.
-Fist fight a bear that people
find much uglier than myself.
Made a bucket list of ****
I think might be legitimately worth doing;
haven't run it by my girlfriend yet.
Speaking of which,
she deserves a round of applause
for dealing with my melodramatic *******.
-Strike a police officer,
after robbing a bank with a water pistol.
I wanted to call her to let her know
I'd chased a bird till it crossed the street
and tweeted at me in anger or excitement.
Flipping the bird "the bird", I shouted,
"******* BIRD!"
and continued home.
-Throw a rock at a train.
-Toss a Molotov Cocktail at a moving car,
and cook a hot dog in the flames.
She deserves a million dollars
and a god-**** Nobel peace prize.
-Call one of those panhandling
money worshiping televangelists
a **** bird, and offer them to ****
themselves [the ugliest people I can think of].
-Wear a habit over a burka.
I don't believe in souls, soul mates,
anything supernatural or special,
but I love that woman,
and that's why I believe in love.
-Not die alone.

The sad part is that most of us, writers,
are almost ashamed to say it out loud.
We do it like a bad habit we can't escape.
****** junkies with the leash around our necks.
Treat it like a disfigurement; our
malignant entries spread like cancer from
under our pathetic, hypocritical hands.
We're sad.
Depressed.
"Heart broken".
Angst ridden.
Jaded.
Coping.
Coping.
Learning to cope,
but often failing.
Stepping on each other;
a sea of cadavers with
no bottom, surface, or center.
Full of brilliance/ brighter than the sun.
Collectively, we are a diamond made from ****.
A uselessly expensive commercial good,
nonetheless.
The next Bukowski will be a child molester,
or a sociopathic spree killer. Too bad
no one wants to be the great writer of course.
What greater shame could there be?
What bigger embarrassment could exist?
What insult and tragedy is more than being
a writer?

There's a resentment that grows in me,
and I don't know when exactly
what day I became this bitter old man
stuck in the body of a **** young idiot.

I take my love wherever
it'll ******* come from now.
I yearn for anything.
Everything.
Death especially.

I don't wanna survive another winter.

A phrase that people treat
like a joke, and that people
have failed to recognize the
significance of.
Black is beautiful.
Brown is beautiful.
Over breakfast foods I tried to
discuss how saying,
"I prefer white people/
I find white people attractive"
is subtle racism.
It was a difficult dialogue that
left me sick and empty.
The feeling of being more radical
than everyone around you.
Meeting a black girl who wants to be white,
hearing from all your friends,
"I just prefer white people",
I see, I see a dominant ideology that
places whiteness above everything else,
especially blackness. It is also a lie.
It is definitely racist.
It says that despite all other qualities a person may have,
their skin color holds them back in your eyes.
Instead I am told my ideas exist in a "box".
The reality of what I say is intensely real to me.
If you can't see the racism in yourself,
I'm not holding you to a quality where
you can point it out in others.
If you can openly pinpoint attractiveness to skin color
and just try to cop it out as "preference"
I am going to call you racist.
Black is beautiful.
Brown is beautiful.
You are not "naturally" attracted to white people.
In that phrase, you tell me it is unnatural for you
to be attracted to black people, or any person of color.
It is not natural. You have adopted the dominant ideology.
It is a subtle and now inherent racism.
I am tired of feeling sick because I'm the radical,
however it is a feeling I understand I will never escape.
It will follow me my entire life, I hope.
I'm sick of feeling marginalized because I recognize
sexism exists, and racism exists, and subtlety does not
******* hide it from me, I'm sick sick sick sick sick of it.
**** it though, I'd rather be sick my entire life,
and see the racism in me and others
than not see it, and just passively swallow that ideology.
I'll carry that weight in my guts,
not because I'm a martyr, because I ******* hate everyone;
because I love myself just that much.
I don't deserve to be that person anymore.
Black is beautiful.
Brown is *beautiful.

And everything turns to ****,

but it’s not like I’m a professional.

All this time I spent lying to myself,

and only now did I get it.

*******. If you don’t understand this now,

then you’re not supposed to.

There’s no flavor, no reason, nothing.

No mark to be made.

No accomplishment will define you.

All this time I spent lying to myself.

I have my chance to move forward

and I’m trying.

Americana folklore,
the modern vintage spoiled.

Early 2000's became the
dystopian 80's nightmare;
beans spilled by bloodied action heroes

part time self fulfilling prophecies.

No religion as a crutch.
We slay God as a fire breathing dragon,
and go to war in 1st world countries
because we're ******* mercenary psychopaths
America as patriotism is nationalism is
patriarchy is violence is a tautology.
America is America.

Has been and always will be;
stupid, violent, full of "grace"
[grace like plastic china].

They say Abe Lincoln was honest,
and they say Jesus wept.
Yeah, Jesus Wept, *******.

Hearing someone you thought was a friend of yours say,
"Women can totally look to get *****".
Then you scratch one friend off the list.

I asked if there was anyone there remotely my age,
and she said yes. I had just dumped all the money in my
wallet into trying to make my savings not negative.
It didn't work.
I walked over, stepped inside,
and saw teenagers. She told me,
there's a guy outside and he's twenty.
I got ******* duped by a kid.
Her parent's left, unwisely.
I met another half-black person,
a 15 year old girl who had dark skin
and hated everything that resembled
"blackness" or "black culture".
She even called herself white.
Here I was, outside drinking grape soda
out of a hello kitty mug,
discussing radical feminism
to teenage girls-
and ******* five shots were fired.
Not even 15 feet away, behind the garage.
[A fake 100 was exchanged, to which distaste was shown,
also this sentence is in parentheses,
and technically doesn't even exist].
So now there are teenage girls crying over gunfire,
hyperventilating, the high school boys jogging-
people in a swarm heading indoors,
and me.
The stupid-*******-tragic-yet-benal artist,
running in his stupid ******* circle,
trying to decide if he should go inside
with the crazy juvenile people, or see if he can get shot,
because he already lives life awaiting some
stupid ******* narcissistic tragedy
to wipe him off the map.
My opportunities had rushed away already however.
I walked inside and sat on the couch hugging
one of those puffy round pillows and laughing
maniacally. It was intense after all.
Kid Duper tried to relate to me.
I know she didn't get it.
No one ever really ******* gets it.
Understood, maybe? No one understands.
I left shortly after with a copy of Fahrenheit 451.
I was told I could borrow it.

I’m not quite sure, yet everything I do
appears to me as being viciously half-assed
yet sincere.
I write this mid-winter [I guess?] on the RTA
with twenty dollars on me and I don’t want to know
in the bank, with cold feet, both literally and metaphorically.
The future looks decent from a distance in bar light.
As I feign some resemblance of being classy and
collect more sodium on my footwear,
I ponder the passing of an officer who flashed a light
to look at me in the dark on my way from home.
It makes me glad I speak English, where there
are such hard, sharp and unsympathetic undertones
to phrases like, “*******”.
It’s dark on the way through Cleveland.
Try to stay warm.

It doesn’t make sense why I hate myself so much

from the outside, but try to understand;

everything that supposedly makes one stand out

really just makes them blend in somewhere else.

So I can’t sleep and don’t even want to be awake.

I’m here because of that and a lot of ****

I just can’t say out loud. **** it.

**** everything.

It wasn't a guitar solo.
It was a guitar and me going
******* on each other;
if it seemed cacophonous
that's because it was
supposed to be.
One of us is going to destroy
the other eventually.
Am I supposed to love a guitar?
See, I wake up next to her,
and look into her eyes,
and it's only love I see.
Warm skin in sunshine beats
factory made in China.
The curves of her shoulders,
or the lines that form her smile,
versus the curves of it's body,
the blades that vibrate at every end.
I painted it yellow, but when I see her
I feel it. Warm.
Me and that instrument are enemies
till either of us dies.
No, I do not love an instrument.

Peak temperature water levels fake diagnoses white psychopaths starving hunger jingoism violence [systems that deprive us] guns entitlement shots fired accidents grief/mourning choking hazard corporate mascots corporate favoritism corporate bailouts corporate people ideology without monitor nationalism patriotism conservatives patriarchy ******-****-suicide victim silence lack of conviction religious ******* false history infant mortality job insecurity invisible hands trickle down economics union busters corporate police brutal police evil police secret police debt bankruptcy foreclosure homelessness lost confused prisoner criminal banker war preparations propaganda ballots commercials advertisements campaigns money power puppets figureheads armies genocides **** bomb gas fire no survival violence wealthy lawyers assassinations heart complications death sleep.

I commit a crime.
Deviate.
I sin;
I don't believe in.

I shoot myself in the foot
to learn how to walk
differently.

I do something evil.
I bleed.

"Try to shoot me down?
You wish you were as fearless
as I am right now,

and if that heart beats
I'll **** it into pieces.
I'd throw it away.

I'm not an artist,
I am death incarnate but
warmer than you thought.

Aim for my bad side,
you make it look cliche and
I make it easy.

No one could stop me;
remind me who ***** with me?",
Princess Sleepyhead.

No one even asks what I'm doing these days,
and it's obvious they don't care.
I want to wash my hands of these people;
I come from a family of fist fighters,
and forgiveness is like a cardinal sin.
****, even I'm still bitter about the ****.
Even I still get upset at the thoughts.
My lover wraps her arms around me
and I radiate this ******* into her.
Every time.
Sleeping next to me
is dirtier than sleeping
in any grave.
This dirt farmer can't wash his hands or his mind,
he isn't a fist fighter or a loud talker,
he won't let the easy things slide,
and even six feet into this hole,
this dirt farmer is still digging.

They swear they can teach you everything
you're going to need to know about
life and how to take on the world.
The same ******* who
can't even tell you an
honest version of history.

If you sigh hard enough, you learn.

Some of us pull everything we know
from the margins and get called part
of an agenda for it.
Most people learn only by what
they perceive on the surface
and miss everything underneath.

Some nights you go hungry, and you learn.

The ******* go to college or university,
get some ******* degree,
and decide it makes them an unofficial expert
on situations they've never been concerned with.
Racists with law degrees.
Some of them go into the military
and come back with scars in their mind,
tell us we're just civilians,
because gun-toting is the education they received.

If you ever slept in a car because you had no choice,
you learn.

I've met a lot of people who read religious texts
and only believe what people "knew" 4000
years ago, at most.
I've met people who tell you they believe in the bible,
then when pressed for information,
obviously can't tell you **** about their own beliefs.

If you have a hard time not biting back out of habit,
you learn something.

The funny thing is, you don't need to learn how to
hate to learn how to love,
but
Once you learn what love is,
it makes it a hell of a lot clearer what hate is.

******* white people;
hide their racism behind
vapid "opinion".

******* white folks will
argue you can't argue with
results and numbers

because white people
can strip race from the issue
and swear it's "equal".

White people without
culture or identity,
strip it from others.

Call you naked as
they strut in stolen clothing.
Full of silicone.

**** with white people,
find out they know the struggle
by the article.

They can sweat big stuff,
but their racism is in
the cracks and seeping.

Disappointingly,
you can't trust white people for
****, not even me.

Not Bush, not Clinton,
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders,
******* Macklemore,

Not Bill O'Reilly,
and not Jon Stewart, and not
viral feminists/

white feminism,
Taylor Swift's white sisterhood,
their artists, music,

writers, poetry,
actors, authors, painters and
sculptors and bloggers,
their politicians,
obviously, but also
their lawyers, doctors,
their engineers and
scientists and businesses,
economists or
pastors, preachers, religion,
programmers, products,
video games and novels;
They will let you down.

The rich or the poor,
it really doesn't matter.
They will let you down.

You stopped responding at my second
jesus **** joke, but I didn't care,
and I was the one at work. Aces.
Even vacation is stressful for you,
although I'll admit my humor isn't great,
but amongst friends I'm hysterical.

I only have about a handful,
and they're all ******* weird as me
except for a couple or several.

I'm not a big fan of most people I root for,
I'm terribly sarcastic, and if I love you
I might want you to fall on your ******* nose.
It's a fifty-fifty split,
or seventy to thirty.
I'm a ravenous cannibal when
I put words down to something tangible.

I'm also late to work or early,
and all my friends get my friends jobs
right before we leave or get fired
or get too poor to stay where we are.
It's a horribly satisfying way to live
but a ******* way to want to die.

I'm a coward and a liar with great hygiene,
I liken myself akin to the noble cockroach,

because I'm a nuclear survivor!
And the post-apocalypse started
right after Hiroshima, and now they
watch or **** everyone,
and people police people.
If you can't afford the rent stay with strangers
or starve to death on the streets while
middle class lunatics watch you evaporate
"rationally" as bystanders in a new world war.

It's not even a subtle genocide.

Born of a binary,
black/white,
white/ black.
Cultured by silence,
a blank slate,
but no more tears.
Time isn't real.
They speak, they say,
tell me there's nothing wrong with me;
standing in the kitchen with my
grandmother telling me there is
nothing DIFFERENT about you.
Strive to conform.
Sameness is a casualty.
I DON'T GIVE A ****
about conservatives
.
"Humanists" avoiding their toxic
misogynistic tendencies,
old friends enlisted
voluntarily perpetuating a
system of violence and suffering,
others are bluffing, don't say ****,
walk eggshells,
I must be a tiger loose from the cage,
and they're waiting to see who becomes the
canary in my coal mine.
Rhyming by incident,
but I hate this **** & I'm not all right.
Women can participate in their own oppression,
minorities can be racist,
we're all raised in a ditch;
Patriarchy, capitalism, class values,
botched messages, "color blindness",
etc. etc. etc.
**** everyone, and don't treat me like I'm better
or I should know better, or I have to be "perfect"
if I want to be "different". Raised in a ditch.
Cultured by racism and depression.
I think of suicide like a novelty
until I don't
.
.
.
Everything turns grey and reads like sloganeering.
Waiting for the past to manifest as a trauma.
Waiting for the past to make sense.
Waiting.

Because it's really ******* degrading to put your
work everywhere, often times for free,
and to not even get **** back.
I'm also really ******* sick of teenagers.
Yeah, that means you too.
Here's a poem called,
"**** the Patriarchy!";
"Someone told me it's just as
reasonable for men to fear ****
on the streets, as women. I've
been dropped into place and now
I realize I'm a radical feminist.
The kind of feminist people
check for under their beds at night.
The unapologetic type of feminist
who doesn't believe
in a "loud minority" of men haters,
but an eager audience listening for them.
The kind who doesn't play for your
culturally and historically  inept *******.
The uncompromising feminist.
Patriarchy is a cage,
feminism is my hammer;
I'm not trying to get out,
I'm going to **** this place up".

I am on a coastline.

All of my treasure has become

everyone else’s garbage or less.

Today I lost my job.

Everyone lost their job.

Shop closed down.

Froze my *** off

carrying these guitars

back home.

There is an island out in the sea.

I’m all alone there tonight

wondering if it gets colder than this.

Saw someone drop their phone
and laughed at them.
I'd like to watch the world drop
their stupid/smartphones
and have to look at each others
stupid goat like faces and gazes.

Remind me what heaven looks like,
all I remember is that I'm a scumbag
with moral insensitivity and
you are my nightmares off the page.
Simultaneously a classic,
also a contemporary gore piece.
A landmine seized by epidemic.

Walked away with an insincere
"I'll see you later",
and I responded with a sincere
"Whatever."
Maybe I'm destroying myself in
character slowly but it takes
so ******* long still.
I cheered an old man who crossed the street alone.
I'm getting too close to yelling at a manager,
and losing a job I need to much.
Too close to the edge, but
when I think about it I always am,
and when I think even harder
I hate everything so much.

They are hunters,
banging on the doors drawing the blinds,
putting the children on their knees
with automatics.
Firepower on firepower,
we are more than we need

and we behave so crazy,
so paranoid.
Blood stained carpets;
we sit in a cage and say we're
safe
and still that blood stains grows
to keep us content.

I heard it in the sugar skulls.

They said, "the dead men are still dead"
but somehow they lied as they hissed
exactly what I wanted to hear;

"the dead men are still dead."

Something special is dying here.
I'm going against a pattern,
and even though it ends
in my misfortune,
I can't stop. I won't stop.
How do I draw blood from stones
as a miracle whispered through
the tonsils of demons? Simple.
I am a monument.
A testament of free will gone awry.
I'm a mustache twirling antagonist;
I made Christ weep,
and bound his mother
to the railroad tracks.
I know, I know,
that hero is going to save your day,
and I'll be in chains or
in a bottomless hole somewhere,
but let me ask these victims,
"What would the other monument be,
if not for myself?"

"Walk my eggshells?" I drool like a dog,
something you're eager to **** with
and dispose of.
I should walk your eggshells
like a minefield in first
world countries?
Mold on your fruits of love or labor,
yet I eat like ******* swine,
aftermath; no hope or sense of self,
**** my sense of identity senseless,
since September still yet towards
another fake continent or mass
of fictional places.
Stuffed back into a box and strangled,
slept next to the coffin he was buried in.
Didn't find it poignant until eight
weeks later washing dishes
for a Latverian dictator.
Google took the teeth out of the search,
and the hand that fed was gummed.
You love the rain till you're stuck in it.
You love escape till you have no home.
You love what you can abuse
and still take home;
Violet on your skin,
Violet on my mind,
Violet for a dream,
Violet for a name,
Violet in my blood,
Violet on my toes,
Violet as a drug,
Violet as an insect
you eat in private,
Violet as violet as violet
as a tautology,
or addictive prescription.
Once I had the leash on you,
now the sores have come back,
my knees and palms make
sick ******* with earth
I cough.

Second step is a promise,
and you misled them
from safe haven
to slaughter.

Gods broken in fragments,
collected in plastic bags,
kept in cupboards
and drawers.

Worships in mirrors.
Praises the reflection.

You've imprisoned
thunderstorms
in your palms;
Are you the villain?
Hypocrite manipulator?
People exist to either assist you
or inconvenience you,
and your aim is to have
one class of person.

Disposable.

He had a confident anxiety,
and a stage name.
Who the hell has a stage name anymore?
He ****** down cigarettes like he was
trying to eat their insides. Violently.
Swore he was a fighter.
Feint at the sight of blood.
I knew the last king of jazz, yeah,
he drank whiskey and sang out of key.
Stole his act from Tom Waits,
like any respectable artist does,
you'll come to find.
He was a big man, literally, intimidating in size
if he wasn't so **** funny. Not goofy, just funny.
Southern man, migrated north.
The south of the north; Buffalo.
Most depressing city in the world,
but you learn something from a guy like that
in a city by Buffalo.
How to survive, maybe,
or how to keep it together long enough.
Long enough for what?

Deifying the cops for saving people
is a lot like
worshiping a retail worker for checking you out.

To call this madness is no longer indignant,
nor would it be a cliche to call me;
Insane, mad, crazy, or wild.

I pilot a nightmare
at the speed of homicide
into the jaws of hell,
the heart of a storm.

My friends are jackals and demons,
With eyes glassy and trapped open.
Heartless as myself.
Howling vulgarities into the apocalypse,
laughing as they bleed
From the mouth.

With death as our bride, and
standing elbow to elbow with legends,
we bear gifts of iron and fire.
We scream into the sunset,
And we are immortal forever,
Even if we die every day.

Remember me this way,
as immortal forever,
Even if I don't see tomorrow,
For I am no longer
Flesh & bone
Steel & fire.

I am a legend.

With love,
Yellowjacket

My body is made of information,
I see in infrared and j-peg,
PNG formats I can't
share over
the internet.

Their eyes see mere mortal things,
and nothing supernatural in technology.
No ghosts in the machines,
no flesh in the software.

No hope in the problem,
nothing thick in the water,
don't call me at home,
remember I can't be bothered.

My skin is a spreadsheet and
my hair is string theory in action
and theory.

My brain is afloat in liquid caffeine
so it's no wonder I over react.
Where do people go when
they daydream?

I can't remember the last time I lived somewhere
that didn't have running water.
I wonder if it's actually happened.
We're moving a maximalist aesthetic
into a minimalist situation.
I just want a glass of water,
a hot shower,
a working toilet.
Ive never been so tired,
and I've never smelled so bad.
My leg are two masses of limp pain,
my hands are stiff, calloused wads of meat.
My right eye is experiencing a
mild swelling, that I'd ******* pray
isn't pink eye, if I believed in god,
which gets harder from here.
Illuminated in the dark of midnight
by computer light,
with only the tickings
of a cheap watch for condolence.
Their voices complain from downstairs.
Then laugh. Then return.
Trinkets chitter around.
Rooms full of garbage.
If you hit it softly enough,
can you still tell you're at the bottom?

My mothers between
light skin and dark skin, blacker
than two of her kids.

My face is her face,
yet people ask if I am
adopted because

they don't see her here,
in the pigment of my skin.
Her love runs deeper.

Her conflict is mine,
her quest for satisfaction
frightens me closely,

like personally.
She breaks down and everyone
treats it as okay,

"Well that's just cookie."
Her family, her husband,
all call her crazy.

But her love runs deep.
I was looking for myself
here, at home. Christmas;

She says, "There are ten
people out there you don't know
who love you. At least."

I float away like
a paper lantern in night;
new fire inside me.

I am on the ground,
with my head up in the clouds.
I am crying now.

I am nothing now.
I am building something new.
I am still searching.

I seek ten people.
Ten people I do not know.
People who love me.

I break down sometimes,
but I have my moms wisdom.
Her smile is my smile.

I put lights in them,
and if they float away I'm
here when they get back.

I'm trying to be
gentle and compassionate.
Honest and caring.

Her face is my face.
My quest for satisfaction;
my love will run deep.

A friend of mine was attacked by
her homicidal cat.
Apparently,
cats are quite toxic.
They are also really evil,
in a naturally stupid way.
Maybe it's about time we
seriously considered them
parasites.
Practically venomous.
This I guess is half poem,
and half cautionary tale.
Your furry friend is an *******.

Run rabbit,
they say you live a second time,
wrote a bedtime story that was
pornographic in nature/features.

Heavens on earth, and earth is in hell.

They say they're gonna teach you
They say they're gonna learn it to you
Love me like a child and I'll
betray you like a father.

Prodigal son come back from
a land made holy by tongue-worship.
He said, "Now is the time we set aside
our petty bloodshed
and keep quiet where justice
fears to reveal itself."

It happened when I left home,
that I came across this fact;
Summer was murdered
and I didn’t care.
Like the never ceasing ticks of a cheap watch,
merciless protesting, and I play the conservative
atop a mountain of ****? [I can’t save anything].
I left home a loser and came back a martyr.
I am vulgarity and purity in the same essence.
I bleed and I congeal. I am the prodigal son
with bleeding extremities and a worn mind.
I’ve seen so very much.

I have given you
all of the wisdom I have,
now ******* will you?

Stop acting like I
owe you something, or that you
never shut me out.

I saw you and I
opened every door, but
you were “too afraid”.

Leave me alone then.
You hesitated and lost.
Your chances are gone.

Keep close what you have,
and cherish that in my place.
The doors are closed now.