"Would you like your groceries
bagged in paper or plastic?
will you be paying with paper,
Or plastic?"

Rock paper scissors
has been replaced
With something
more rudimentary
But essentially,
Neither have intentionality.

No matter how far you try to move
away from synthetic
you're still drinking out of plastic
eating out of plastic
driving, walking, buying, *******
out mounds of it.
You put your plastic in plastic,
leave it outside
until a man swings by
throws it into a pit
with all the other wasted ****
to exist
for all eternity.

Would you rather melt or burn?
Bankruptcy is a hard lesson to learn
But the ashes of this economy have been
Touted as prosperity
Instead of resigned to an urn
To relearn the transparency
of democracy
As it should be.

I'll trade my plastic smile
For a fistful of paper
I'll exchange it for something physical,
Something bigger
Something somehow better,
Sans the improvement.
The reanimation of the market
Capitalism! Ah,
The dream land.
“Build your monopoly
Crush your enemy”

Oops I mean your neighbor
They're all the same
in this day and age.
Community has been sold
for pennies on the dollar.
Now we’re fighting tooth and nail
To be the one
wearing the shock collar

Bzzzt!
I have the most likes on my photo
Bzzzzt
This minor annoyance
has become my addiction.
I’m shopping and sharing
And living within this tiny television.

This is post apocalyptic
You just can't see it
Because you're living in it.
Things are better, yes
But 6.7% of Americans are diagnosably,
incurably depressed.
37% are oppressed
44%  are over stressed and
81% are in debt.

Let me just say this now
From my white-privilege-podium
That keeps all adverse effects
Of free speech
From touching me

****
YOUR
AMERICA.

**** this corporate greed
that grinds itself down
and repackages itself into
“The American Dream”.

and **** us, right?
For thinking anything here was free.

There was a time my words
were poison and sap
all in the same breath.
I was vile
but I was gorgeous,
The only vice I had left
was to claw out the insides
Of lesser men
With a rapturous tongue
And a sharp steel pen.

Today is the day
I buy that bus ticket
for somewhere
on the other side
of the methodical mundanity
I've dubbed "daily routine".

I become
the salvation army
second-hand sweater
to the space in between me,
and wherever I end up.
Worn,
warm
and welcoming
to anyone who hungers
for comfort.

In a dream,
a wispy woman
wafts down to me
and whispers quietly,
"window, or mirror?"
repeatedly until it echoed
as a haunting melody
of indecipherable melancholy.

I awoke as the sun suggested.
Awaiting the play of penitence
to present itself
as the heat of a distant star
masqueraded behind skies
gessoed grey.

The ethereal muse still perched
behind conscious mind,
eyes searching for a tangible answer
to reply, but found nothing,
save my reflection in the half light
and small slivers of outside
through Venetian blinds.
Dec. 16, 2016

Street lights shift in tandem,
Flickering rhythmically
Sputtering small halos of safety

Bleached, cracking pavement
devoid of fellow travelers,
and subsequent passengers

I devour dotted lines,
The speed of light
no longer constant.

I allow heavy lids to fall
without much hesitation.
Feel the road sway beneath

I above, disconnected,
yet grounded still. Oil atop water;
Disharmonious cohabitants

Consistency is lost. I pretend
time moves as I please
With or without me

I begin to count


One
Testing preservation,
Instinctual construction of survival.

Two
How long can I trust
touch to keep the course

Three
Can distance be anticipated
without visual stimuli?

Four
I feel the whir of the engine,
obediently churning

Five
hear the wind whipping
defying my wish for silence
slipping through the back window

Six
This is bliss.
I swim envisioned oblivion

Seven
I should open my eyes

Eight
Reality in motion -
time makes me queasy.

Nine
Sight returns.

I stop counting.
Safe, trundling on
I slide silently down 48.

December 12, 2016

Whispering eternally into the void
Hoping internally
It can turn the black
churning bile of thoughts
into incandescent showers,
specific epiphany.

Lately, I've been laden
with the epitome of anomaly.
Loner labotomy,
living in self devised autonomy
A private economy of thoughts,
exchanging deranged for sane

Only to flip back again
Turn around, full swing
Indignant incantations ring,
Echoing down the corridors


This skeletal paradigm
Of rusted pipes
I've unwittingly installed
above once placid pools,
A wellspring for many muses.


Caught in a rift of dimension
Words begin to leak
Without direct intention
And with little attention for the details
My thoughts quickly become words
That derail more than just a conversation.
My hesitation to engage
Is a fair wage for holding my silence
Tightly,
But the precarious musings of my mind
Must tumble out to spite me.


I tried cutting out my tongue to save face
But a poet who can't speak is a disgrace.

1.8.2017
C.e.M.

Bodies replicating displacement,
twisted growths
Streaming up walls
that separate and segregate
The once spacious and spontaneous.

Brimming past allotted space,
Gridlocked in a postmodern wasteland
Deprived of wonder,
no ability to wander.

Stretching,
aching to escape the odds,
The masses stacked against each other,
wrapped in suffocating saran.

Plastic and detached
We clamor for peace
As they bury the hatchet
Separating bone and flesh
De-spining our fragile backs
In an effort to preserve class.

They tie us up on strings
For an elaborate show,
Distractions make us feel we’re in control.
Puppets and human beings
Become indistinguishable.

A pre-allocated placement
only masked by possession.
This land of the free is weighted
towards the monetary security
of them,
Never us.

So will we,
modern day slaves
of the service industry
placidly toil to please their every need?

No, indeed
The chosen few will turn back,
Ready to be trampled
by the stampede of society.

Itching within,
beneath skin and muscles
through blood vessels and malleable marrow,
All vibrating in frustration
and we will exclaim
with little more owned than our given names,

We are no longer
willing to play survivor,
fighting against our neighbor
To climb this invisible ladder.

We’re digging through the *******,
elbow deep
and dredging up with two clenched fists
The forgotten sediment of rebellion.