In these streets gather grime and slime,
And an ideological undercurrent
That is by no means benign.
Indeed, this culture is rapacious:
Exploit, take, exploit, consume,
Endlessly, ever endlessly,
With no regards for when it all runs out.

This cancerous mindset
Is now mainstream.
It is default.
It is not only allowed,
But rewarded.
Selfishness and sociopathy
Are synonymous with success.
You are what you own,
And nothing else.
Your little words and little drawings,
With their little meanings
Mean little to anyone.
Pack up the books, the pencils, the paints,
Stow them in the attic,
And instead,
Slave away at something you merely tolerate.
That, my friends, is the American way.

By: Forrest Jorgensen ©

Rolling my spirit free
From an early sleep,
The faint purr of my fan
Registers in my ears.

I am lulling with
Unconscious states,
Teasing them to return.
But,

My eyelids show
I've left the light on.
The house is static.
I'm hardly controlling my breathing,
When in my left ear
I hear a roaring, rapid inhale,
Other-worldly,
Infinitely distant
Yet right next to me.

I am ******
Into reality
And I see
before me
Only

my


room.

By: Forrest Jorgensen©

In reality I am on a couch,
Melting into its cushions
In the heights of an acid trip.
With my consciousness phasing
In and out of my corporeal being,
I lose grip, and project:

There is an ambulance,
Somewhere,
Backside down in a sinkhole
In some street,
And in the back is a dying man.
Each wavelength of perception pulls me into him;
I meld with his soul --
We become one:

Our face is pressed against the shattered glass
Of the left rear window,
Strewn in a suspension of blood,
Oil,
Dirt,
And pitch black asphalt.
We are not moving.
We cannot move.
We are crumpled into a position unnatural.
I see us from third-person and first-person
Simultaneously:
This ruined human form, broken and doomed.

Our heart is slowing.
The blood pools against our left cheek.
Each beat is slower than the last,
Each pump more shallow.
We're slipping away.
And then, at once,
No more beats,
Our eyes glaze over,
And I dissipate;
Melt into the folds of unknown realms:
I sink away.

There is no "Human" here;
There is no identity.
Nothing but pure wavelengths,
About me drift celestial ribbons,
Alight with infinitely brilliant reds and ultraviolets:
Pure mathematics,
Metaphysical, immaterial --
I do not ask where I am.
I am no longer "I".
My conscious spirit, my soul, my being,
Dissolves into the primordial frequencies
Of this sublime realm.
I touch infinity.
I become one with the source from which
All organic matter receives energy,
Where all life is recycled,
Where I am led to believe we go when we die:
The Conduit of Consciousness.

Yet, I am awoken,
Face down in a gravel driveway
Outside the house with the couch.
Much of my inside lip is missing.
My mouth tastes of dirt, grime, and blood.
It is five in the afternoon.
I'm on Earth.
My name is Forrest.
It seems that I am alive.
People, humans, ones that I know,
Are around me,
And they bring me up.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

The insignificance of a human life:
How monumentally minuscule it is.
Yet to survive,
To breathe in another sunrise,
To keep the generations coming,
The individual's most logical choice
Is to value itself above everything.

The realization of the self's grand insignificance
Is counterintuitive to its survival,
Thus, sentient life is inexorably tied to delusion;
To bent truths,
And comfortable lies.

Confronting one's futility,
However,
Often leads to desolation.
So fold yourselves within, humans,
Find a soft spot within your minds
And plant there the seeds of your joy.
Do not squander the little time you have
With things beyond your comprehension
The infinite cosmos is not for you.

Care for those that you love,
Fill your lungs with wild air,
Embrace your domain,
And live without refrain.

Primetime TV is asinine;
Intellectual cyanide.
Empty like a home in Palestine,
And corrosive like an alkaline:
It's the software for the poor.
Subliminally shutting your doors
Of perception,
While they pump the town full of more --
More liquor stores
And two cent ******,
Deadbolted doors
Adorned with gang graffiti
Where the government ignores.
So how can I sleep
When all these kids never eat?
And where's the sweeps
For the bodies in the streets?
They'll just pour more concrete
Over our homes.
Gentrified zones,
Minorities in tow.
High interest loans.
Money's dried up,
Foreclosure and drones
Dropping tear gas on the protesters;
Arresting anyone not in their homes
Please tell me, how can I atone
For the sins of a system
That riddles the world with victims?
This is the modern vista
The ghetto is everywhere
The aftermath of an affair
Between the elite
And their federal clientele.
Predatory lending,
Bailouts, drop outs,
A culture without.
Humanitarian drought.
Where's the empathy?
The love?
The care and clemency?
A solution for this endemic peasantry?
Man, I wish I knew.
I wish the numbers weren't true,
And I wish the sunrise brought a nice view,
Instead of billboards and condemned buildings,
Abandoned homes, potholes, ****, and trash:
The ashes of a golden age long past.

There is an emptiness inside of me.
It does not stare back.
It offers nothing,
And it gives nothing.
Deep within me, it festers,
Writhing in unnatural ways,
Shooting infinitely black tendrils
Through every vessel of my brain.
They wrap themselves around
My memories, my emotions,
My friendships and obligations,
Like eating and education,
Then yanks them all into that void,
That vast emptiness,
And leaves me as
A fraction of who I once was.

By: Forrest Jorgensen

The sky is solid, gray, motionless.
Shuffling bodies with obscured shadows
Make haste for shelter
From the stark, lifeless outside
With its grass that only lives if watered,
The always leafless trees,
And the carcinogenic air.
Looking upward,
Through the smoggy haze,
One sees the neon silhouettes
Floating in the sky,
Atop the glass and steel monoliths.
They speak to those below,
Of subtle, clandestine oligarchy.
Subconsciously belittling the anonymous masses,
"We are Titans, you are rats."
Say the towers,
As the populace quietly passes over stained concrete and asphalt,
Wearing breathing masks,
Saying not a word to the thousands they pass.

We make haste in this world.
We cannot afford to help a stranger,
To make a detour with a view,
To get your child that gift they really want.
So fiercely we have been strangled
That empathy is illogical.
"What a world" we all say,
As we avoid eye contact with the hungry;
As we change the channel from the melodramatic infomercial
About starving, disease-ridden children somewhere else;
As we console ourselves with hollow entertainment and intoxication,
To keep the guilt at bay,
To keep the thoughts at bay,
"Just do what's best for you,
Don't step out of line,
Shuffle in,
Follow the queue.
That's all you can do."