Elaenor Aisling: Favorites

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

My Country

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Joshua Haines

My country is full of people
too violent and dumb to be anything else.
We value money, bodies, and your stuff
because it is not ours yet.

My flag is wrapped around some
white-trash hick's *******.
You look different than us and
that is ******* terrifying;
please leave while we stay
in your country,
'protecting you'.

My country is home to
religious freedom, as long
as the religion is Christianity.

My country is the world's
greatest melting ***, but
we'd prefer all ingredients
to be the same or die.

My country is a joke,
thinking it's the standard
the world desires to achieve.

My country is the world police,
creating tension, harassing you,
hating you, taking from you.

#usa #country #23 #trump

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

She's Such a Lamb

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Joshua Haines

She's Such a Lamb

When our bones rub softly,
I can take my teeth out and
shine them like skin cutters.
A yellow-bird dress you wear;
the same matchbox socks
that you wouldn't bother.

Sometimes, all the time, I
shiver in the gelatin lake
and what a faux-shake
it would only take
to make you care.

Baby, maybe, you
could love your child
like the sultry sandman;
place them on pinkish pillows,
and pretend your stories are
as real as your lashes.

And what a lamb,
kneeling in the Irish grass,
drinking all that is in her glass,
before breaking it over a wet stone,
and holding it to her throat, singing,
"I've always been surrounded, but
have always felt alone."

#love #depression #death #drugs #23 #ireland

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Worries (What am I to do)

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Joshua Haines

Worries (What am I to do)

FADE IN.

Mama, come try to deliver me;
I've been a rubber baby
since nineteen-ninety-three.
Father, come try to educate me;
I've been your no-good
since I turned thirteen.

Please, Lord, find the redemption in me --
I've grown weary of the way worry
boils, brews, and eats me slow.
See, friend, I can feel, too;
I used to let you down because
that's all I thought I knew
what to do.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

Sister, angel, become bloodshot
at the way I hang; swaying
from the bedroom tree.
Sometimes I mistake my
bad brains for rotting fruit;
mushy peaches, doused in
fishbowl alcohol and
worries I can't shoo.

Good God, Lord,
what am I to do?
Good Lover,
what am I to say?
Good Brother,
I've failed you so.
Good Father,
I'm sorry I'm made this way.

I'm just a young boy unaware
of the stretcher
I think is a bed;
Bad brains make the
star-kid in my head.

Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada
Dah-Dah-Dah-Dah-dadada

FADE OUT.

#love #death #anxiety #family #23 #southern

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Biospace in the Age of Epistemic Mutilation

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Akemi

Biospace in the Age of Epistemic Mutilation

The frame has blurred away \ Fever death arising like burst glass || mangled spines \ This is the age of fact | where the violent insertion of cancer cells into animals is applauded by scientists across the globe \ Objectivity is the new face of barbarism | death god // sublimating existence for truth \ Raw data filters from the rot of deformed limbs | tweezers crush the heads living fish // guts spill | formaldehyde fixes the flesh of squirming insects | spliced genes splay the spines of mewling mice \ There’s no doubt || biology is the practice of death \ Animals without niches \ Organs without bodies \ Cells without hosts \ An aperture maw | red // yellow // black // white | leaking nervous tissue over an absent whole \ Reality has been atomised // brutalised // banalised \ Objective knowledge replacing all critical thought << [[Muscle // nerve // fat // blood // bone ]] Experience nothing \ [[The germ cell cycles every 28 days ]] Know nothing \ [[The average lifespan of a lab rat is three years ]] Feel nothing \ [[Over one hundred million are killed yearly ]] Science saves \ Biospace severed // prescription drugs fall // epistemic // into clean white bottles \

After getting a biology degree, I came to the realisation that for three years of my life I had studied nothing but death.

That objectivity is a throwaway term to allow morally inept ***** to slaughter as many living creatures as possible for the sake of publishing a scientific paper that will be out of date by the end of the decade.

That anthropocentricism, utilitarianism and humanism allow one to circumvent any and all forms of ethical debate over the suffering inflicted by science on other life forms.

That animal ethics is such a joke to the University that the only exercise we did to confront it was stick a pin on a string, the left pole signifying comfort and the right discomfort, before cutting into a live eel.

That statistical and categorical norms allow for those who define them to dominate over those who deviate from them.

That truth is like any other commodity; completely divorced of its origins; a free-floating fact whitewashed of all bias and blood, to be consumed without any thought as to its production.

That science isn't progressive, but a conservative body miming apoliticality, while developing lethal weapons for imperalist armies.

That this world is abhorrent.

#veganism #antihumanism

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

My first day in school

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

bones

My first day in school

Somebody bundled
it into a clock
and slung it up high on a wall,

with numbers
like bars between us,
where there had been nothing before;

before,
my days had come open,
open and endless like sky,

but boxed on the wall
there looked no room for all
of the rest of my lifetime and I.

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

light across a bedroom floor

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Akemi

light across a bedroom floor

strands of hair, half-remembered
the sun has shrunk to bone.

light across a bedroom floor
spread brittle, held, lost.

this world deserves nothing
acre lit.

nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing.

//

the world blacks out
or maybe just me.

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

No Good Son

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Joshua Haines

No Good Son

I once was a kind of smart man;
pretentious to the bone --
I took a pill for the thrill
of masking a part
I thought was gone.

Something, Something
College Dropout
Something, Something
No Good Son
I took a drive to stay alive
because I swore I
was once someone.

I once was a good American;
dollar bills on my bones --
I fell in love with the glove
that covered the debt
that made me feel alone.

Something, Something
Godless Monster
Something, Something
First Born Waste
I bought a gun to
have some fun and
thought I'd have a taste.

I hope I'm a loving father
and don't vanish in the dust.
There aren't many thoughts
that bounce in this head
I find I can trust.

Something, Something
Standard Loner
Something, Something
Find Me When I'm Gone

Something, Something
Where Am I
Something, Something
Am I Someone

#love #fear #god #alone #23 #commercialism

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Germinate.

Jan 2017 Elaenor Aisling

Michael

Germinate.

The roots of our ghosts lay in brittle earth
drinking up all that's left of a dry well
hungry, savage rainclouds
open-mouthed and empty
tongueless and sharp-toothed
the jagged claws of thirst
we can't swallow what's left of our conversations
your salt water lashes cling to each pause
the smallest ocean haunting me
storming a little
pouring deep into the spinal column
stripped bare like bark
peeling sheet after sheet
of collapsing microscopic webs
spiny snapped synapses I wish I could tear out violently
break, trash, ruin, I don't care
while caring so profoundly I can't breathe
I whisper car crash questions
and feel so far from myself
I can't even tell if I'm asking you anything
like thunder in the distance
lightning for a moment
each spark failing to jump the bridge for souls
a suicide note when we tangle ourselves
an EVP, "remember when **** was better—"
white noise between cracked lips
the loudest silence, too
what are we even listening for
this static electric current can't leap
from my mouth to yours with a kiss
even if our hands touched
even if you keep crying
even if there is nothing left
even if we planted ourselves right here
and we can't ever grow again