How do people go to sleep at night?
   I've never understood, I must confess
   for only once the dawn exudes its light,
   does my fatigue subdue me with duress,

But when the sun is hid behind the clouds,
  or buried in the snowy mountain tops,
  my thoughts are racing, and they're very loud,
  and seldom is it that they ever stop,

For, something in my brain, I do suspect,
  is wired in a way that is amiss,
  so, I take evening hours to reflect,
  instead of diving into sleep's abyss
  
  But, oh! If only ****** grew on trees,
    perhaps, a night of rest would come with ease.

Dear literary journals:

I'm a millennial American male
who came of age in the aughts.
Do you have ANY idea how much
RAP MUSIC I GREW UP ON?!?!?!?!

And now you want me to write some
sort of rhyme devoid, metrically impoverished
modernist dross which is REALLY

just prose that's written in line
and stanza break, in order for you
to publish me? Please do clarify:

HOW THE HELL DO I DO THAT?!?!?!?!

I have SOOOOO much more in common
with Mos Def, Talib Kweli, and MF DOOM
than I do with any of that ridiculous nonsense
that your stuffy Imagist deity Ezra Pound
(who was also an ardent FASCIST, might I add)
churned out page after page. I mean, look

William Carlos Williams:

"I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold"

Now, look at Kweli:

"Yo, I activism, attackin' the system
The Blacks and Latins in prison
Numbers have risen, they're victims lackin' the vision
****, and all they got is rappin' to listen to
I let them know we missin' you, the love is unconditional
Even when the condition is critical, when the livin' is miserable
Your position is pivotal, I ain't bullshittin' you
Now, why would I lie? Just to get by? "

and please explain to me, just exactly how the former
is SUCH a higher form of art than the latter?

It's beginning to seem to me that
The REAL issue here is that rhyme and meter
were co-opted by a group of writers
who evolved
the usage of
said literary devices
to such an advanced degree,
that many of the older styles
paled in comparison, and
ESPECIALLY in terms of technical prowess

It just so happened,
that to the great misfortune of those
brilliant auteurs
they just so happened to be
not only POOR,
but also BLACK,
thereby barring their innovations
from serious consideration
by those in the ivory tower
of so called "HIGH ART"

As if to say:
"Oh, RHYMES?"
You mean those old artifacts
of the outdated formalists, and
favored staples of the lowly rappers?

In a way that as if by magic, makes Williams'
Inane single sentence about eating plums
written in line and stanza break, somehow
better, more enduringly creative, and
of greater importance, than
Kweli's incisive social commentary.

But, you know. I'm always open to being wrong.
Since, I usually am wrong about most things.
But, it seems that every time I pick up a lit journal,
it's the same type of broken narratives, with
the occasional token verse or rhyme
thrown in for good measure.
Maybe I just don't read enough lit journals,

but I can just about GUARANTEE that in 100 years,
people will have a much more distinct memory of Nas's
"Illmatic" than they will Ezra Pound's "Cantos"
And in point of fact, most people with whom I speak these days,
do not even know who Ezra Pound WAS, but they SURE know Kendrick's verses from "Alright"

So what gives, lit journals? It seems obvious at this point
that rappers are now creating the most successful and
widely disseminated forms of oral poetry currently in existence
So why is it that your publications seem so averse to
styles which bear a written resemblance?

Just a touch of
CLASSISM, perhaps?
Or am I just being ignorant?
Paranoid?

Swarms of
Rabid vultures
Flocked in perilous
Formations, plotting
Their descent
Upon fragile, frail, and
Unsuspecting truths,

Blood soaked moons
Wept their regret,
Over a scorched, and
Barren Earth,
Where justice lay

Entombed within
The broken promise of
Its own fulfillment, and
Waited for the glow of
The messianic light

Wealthy,
by dint of lucky birth
lavish,
by way of early learning,
the boy's body grows,
but his mind does not, and
with all things merely
given
he himself is
given
to taking
all desired things
without
a second thought

Profligate
in action, manner, and style
his brash displays of excess
appear to him
congenial acts of
tempered moderation

his slavish hedonism,
blinds him to the
folly of his ways,
like a child with an
insatiable sweet tooth
and the keys to a candy shop

he peruses the town
in ritualistic fashion
night after night,
sowing seeds of  
licentious desire
which bloom
into Devil's Trumpets
of debauched
indulgence

one drink
then another
one line
then another
one pill
then another
one conquest
then another

attained in
rapid succession
pursued with
reckless abandon

awakening
in a different bed
each afternoon
sun beams
piercing the blinds
stinging his weary eyes

his temples throbbing
his vision spinning
his stomach churning
his desire remaining
the void within him imploring:
“ENDURE”

but soon

he discovers his
well of fortune
has finally run dry
the repressed knowledge
of this inevitability
descends upon him
like a Biblical plague

his cards decline
his key refuses to
open its door and
the doors of his conquests
slam in his face

and so

the destitute rake
stumbles pitifully
without aim

with body aching
with knees weakened
with ears ringing
with hands trembling
with vision blurred
with fear and doubt
mocking his every step

the concrete corridors
once so exuberant
now appear to him as
moribund and desolate
graveyards for the senses

the neon banshees
which once broadcast their
sultry siren songs
like choirs of cherubs
heavenly and divine
now sound to him
like the tortured screams
of the ******
rising up
to haunt his dreams

the emptiness remains
echoing his every
tortured thought:

"who am I?"
"what have I become?"
"why am I here?"
"what was it all for?"

awash in the tumult
of the dark night of the soul,
the handsome stranger's limbs
give out from beneath him, and
his mind collapses into deep
and dreamless sleep
whose
countenance mimics
the final embrace
of death

For him,
they are one in the same,
and of deaths,
this will be the first
of many
for he has
but yet begun
to learn.

Disdain for
Traditional forms,

A sense of
Detached irony,

Self-reflexivity,
Expressed as a

Flagrant,
Meta-textual
Awareness,
                                        ­        

                                          adventurous
                                          typography,
                                              

                ­                                                     that defies
                                                                ­     the common
                                                          ­           relational schemes
                                                         ­            between text
                                                                ­     and margin



The juxtaposition
Of words
Governed by
Syllabic content,

and
       freed
                from
                         the
                               burden
                                            of
                                               syntactical
                                                     ­             strictures

Meanings
Changed
Through
Inversion

(now read it upside down)

                                                         ­  
                                                             ­       the
                                                                ­    poem
                                                                ­    recites
                                                                ­    itself

Paralyzed truth
Mimics brave fear,
Abdicating censure, and
Redressing allusion,
                                                       ­       

                                                               Liberation
                                                                abounds
                                                                in the trough
                                                                of a sine wave

Lo!
            
             the city streets
                           are alive
            
                                       the cacophony of car horns
                                              clamors in the distance
                                      
            
                       the velvet
                                 night's
                                         embrace
                                               envelops me
                                      
                              the              
                ­    flowering light,
                                 of the moon
                                                            ­                 beckons
                                                         ­                    in radiant parlance
                                           over the horizon

                                                     and my
                                           mind               abides
                                                    
                                                         in
                                                    
         ­                                           tranquil
             ­                                       
                         ­                           stillness.

Have you ever...

Heard a color? Seen a sound?
Smelled a thought, or all around,
Traversed an inward universe,
Where waves of mind abound?

Have you ever...

Climbed upon a ray of light,
Ascending towards the peak, and
Visited a place, of which
Mere words could never speak?

Have you ever,

Felt yourself expanding,
Out into the atmosphere, and
Glimpsed your tiny world below,
While laughing at your fear?

Have you ever...

Stepped outside that little box,
The one that some call "you?" and
Probed the depths, to question
Why you do the things you do?

Well,

...have you?

Freedom is a gift and curse,
When time is finite and eludes,
It leaves us many wounds to nurse

With every choice that life exudes,
Affirming one, we must deny,
The others we may have pursued

While pondering the reasons why,
We're here at all, and what it means,
With knowledge that we'll one day die

This life is wondrous, yet obscene,
         Both terrifying, and serene.

You poor fools!
Pity be upon you!
You are practicing
A dying art form!

Do you not realize,
That poetry is biased
Towards the literate?

There once was a time
When the scribes were
Revered as gods, but
Regrettably, that time
Has long since passed.

Now, we live in an age of
Constant, electronic stimulation,
Mediated by a steady flux of
Ready made imagery, where

Flashing lights and bright colors
Whittle away at the attention span, and
Destroy the capacity of the mind
To imagine for itself, so

Keep your word count low, and
Your syllable count lower, or
You just may lose your audience.

Well,

Some sticks and some stones,
They may break a few bones, but
I've got megaton bombs,
That make dust out of homes,
My days are spent waging war,
Spreading famine and disease, and
I get anything I want, without ever saying please,
I'll slay your dragon, storm your castle,
Once I swim across your moat,
I'll slit your throat, and take your life,
Then **** your wife, and steal your goat,
I've overdosed on every drug ever imagined or conceived,
I've got a guile that's monumental, and I'm eager to deceive,
I'll tell you anything you want because you're willing to believe,
I'll build you up to break you down, the lost pieces, never retrieved,
My victims receive no reprieve, I live a life with no remorse,
My course of action's one for which I'll never seek recourse,
I'm an immovable object, I'm an unstoppable force,
I have discarded sympathy, and from my empathy divorced,
I'll bet you think that I'm depraved, that I'm a morbid ball of slime, but
I'm asleep inside of you, and you'll be mine within due time, cause
I'm the devil on your shoulder, I'm the voice inside your head,
I'm the blackout following the vision tinted red,
I'm the man inside your closet, monster underneath your bed,
I'm the reason for the millions the world over lying dead,
I feed my hunger with your fear, wet my thirst with blood and tears,
This machine is shifting gears, don't try to scream; no one will hear
I'm not a problem you can solve with stronger locks or bigger guns,
In fact, it's when you seek these things I know that I've already won.

Sleep tight.

Today's lesson's theme is political repression, through
Media deception, how men behind the curtain,
Treat the truth with an aggression, displacing crucial issues, by
Societal regression, material fixation, obsession with ***, and
Through years of inspection, I've learned to detest them,
My mind reels in anguish, I battle my depression, 'cause
When I look around, do you know what I see?
A bunch of petty *******, that makes no sense to me, and
I can't help but feel, that it's not meant to be, see
These many different reasons, why I'm stressed mentally?
Cause if we'd all get together, and behave sensibly, then
We'd throw these crooked bankers in the penitentiary, but
Instead, it's L.B. he was down on the block, the
Cops stopped him and found a crack rock in his sock,
Now he's locked upstate on a 5 year bid, though
His crime can't hold a candle to what Wall Street did
Wait... did I say 'did'? I did?... I meant does
Modify the tense to present; that's an is, not was
'Cause those ******* empty suits stay all day on a buzz, from
Champagne, *******, and the high class ******, then
In board room meetings, while behind closed doors,
They all gamble on the future of entire generations,
Make austerity and poverty, with wage stagnation, and
Stack private prison profits, selling mass incarceration,
Take steps at every turn to undermine our population,
These are ravings from a psyche with a short supply of patience.
I'm a little bit curious, why you aren't furious, and
Sometimes, I wonder, as they pillage and they plunder,
Where we're all gonna live when the world's torn asunder, and
I wait for the day the giant wakes from its slumber, and
The voice of the people, shakes the earth like thunder, to
Shatter shackled chains, and alleviate the pain, but
I guess my final question must be: do I wait in vain?

Well,
green
WAS
my
favorite
color. . .

Dear Georg,

In the Phenomenology of Spirit, you wrote:

"Reason is spirit, when its certainty of being all reality has been raised to the level of truth, and reason is consciously aware of itself as its own world, and of the world as itself. The development of spirit was indicated in the immediately preceding movement of mind, where the object of consciousness, the category pure and simple, rose to be the notion of reason."

and I was just kinda wondering. Well.... ermmm... what?!?!?!?!

Sincerely,

Tom

Arab scarabs
wielding scabbards
staggered with hilts
laid waste to
idle Cherubs in
garments
embroidered
like quilts.

They're off kilter,
with no filter, and
wear stilts where
leaves wilt, sir
please lilt yr
tactless

anachronisms
through fractured
refractive prisms
to help the mind
unbind from
shop, office, and
factory prisons

Listen:

there's a
penitent androgyne,
speaking
sentence in pantomime
as though rhyme
were no longer
a kind of
berated
creative crime: But

who
the
hell
CARES?!?!?!?!

I write, but why write? Well,
because it's my rite; and
to spare you my tears,
I'll make sure to be clear:
It's not rite as in 'right'
as opposed to a wrong,

like a discordant note
that's misplaced in a song
or a 'right' so bestowed in
divinity's throng, handed down
by a deity mighty and strong, but

a rite, like a ritual, rather habitual.
This you will gather, and
this you'll process, and
with deepening fervor,
we'll further progress: It's

addiction to diction,
to poems, to fiction
where syllables,
fill up whole pages.
The friction, of
pen against paper, just
gives me the vapors. The

clacking of keys, makes
me weak at the knees.
Some may call it disease and
express their disgust, but
my lust for these words
I just cannot appease.

So with all of my might, and
from morning to night,
I equip with my tools, and
I write and I write.

Too boorish, crass, and petulant,
To dazzle them, with eloquent,
Resplendent words of elegance, so
He proclaimed: "Aw **** it!"
"Think I'll have another beer. 'Cause
Poetry's a bunch of crap, I wish
They all would shut their trap
That ****'s for prissy *****,
hippie dippie, airy fairy queers."

There's a secret saboteur,
         hidden within everyone
Fashioning his cloak and dagger
         for a twisted bit of fun

The use of his first artifact is
         to eclipse the Inner Sun
The purpose of the second is for
         tearing holes so light may run

Through an ever looming darkness
         which obscures the thought of hope
Extending brittle olive branches
         or frayed lengths of climbing rope, so

That his ploys will surely tempt you
         that you'll try, and that you'll fail
Til his sadistic plotting leaves you
         feeling withered, weak, and frail

So joyously, he toys with thee,
         to watch his sullen victim
And thrives upon the notion that
         thou never wilt evict him

For how such lavish luxury
         couldst ever thou afford
When thou art but a lowly serf
         and He, a mighty Lord?

But if you only knew the truth
         it'd surely set you free!
That deep below the surface
         he is you, and you are he.

So, discipline this phantom
         tell him that you've had enough!
He struggles in control of you
         but you have called his bluff!

So now, you shatter chains that bind you
         now you break the psychic yoke
So now, you seize from him the dagger
         now you rip to shreds the cloak.

I write poetry often, but it never writes me back.

You stood before the monolith of human creativity.

You drank from the wellspring of intellectect and reason.

You dug into the mine shaft of scientific progress, and

All you got were cubicles, desk jobs, and heart attacks.

Mickey D's, Starbucks,
Viacom, Walmart.

Pizza Hut, Subway,
CBS, Hallmark.

BUY IT! BUY IT!
BUY IT! BUY IT!

Know you wanna,
Don't deny it!

Gotta have it!
NEED to try it!

Feel it pull?
You can't defy it!

(and a voice beckons)

"but..."

"My soul, it slowly withers,
"I've become a hollow vessel, and
"My mind is torn asunder, by
"These demons that I wrestle,

"...and sometimes

"I wonder feverishly,
"If I'm the only one,
"Who can see the world,
"Unravel, as we're chasing
After fun."

Leads to...

******, Xanax,
Klonopin, Prozac,

Welbutrin, Zoloft,
Big pharma, knows that

You don't need to think,
The more you think,
The less you work,

Obama's drones are
Bombing Pakistan, but
LOOK AT ******* TWERK!!!!!!

"The unexamined life is not worth living" -Socrates

"KNOW THYSELF" -- Socrates

"Wise is he who knows that he knows nothing." - Socrates

"Do not seek to have events happen as you want them to, but instead want them to happen as they do happen, and your life will go well." -- Epictetus

"No pleasure is a bad thing in itself, but things which produce certain pleasures bring troubles many times greater than the pleasures." -- Epicurus

"Natural wealth is both limited and easy to attain, but wealth, as defined by groundless opinions, extends without limits." - Epicurus

Well, nobody seems to
read my political stuff, so
Maybe I should hammer out,
Some uninspired fluff, about
Pixie dust, and rainbows, and
Boy meets girl, about how
When their lips touched,
They forgot about the world, and
He captured and enraptured her, and
Soothed her aching heart, and how
They long for each other,
Every moment they're apart

Yeah, sure...

I just firmly placed my hands
On the side of the loveseat armrest
And then walked my feet
Up the adjacent wall
Until my body was at
A 45 degree angle
To the floor.
I'm not sure,
Why
I did that.
But it was a good decision
I've never seen this room
From that point of view before.

Nobody reads this ****... so I'm just gonna start typing. Why not? Freudian automatic writing is an old psychological gold standard, though I guess we can't really be sure how useful it is to analysis these days. Oh well, perhaps some illuminating nugget of insight into the complex inner workings of the human psyche will emerge from a later re-visitation of the text laid down here. Probably not... yeah, Freud was a strange one anyhow, he wanted to bone his mom, you know. He also loved *******. He once botched a neurological operation because he was too high, and then the patient came to him in a dream and blamed him. Of course, being the smelly old narcissistic cokehead that he was, he read some sort of esoteric meaning into the dream sequence and ignored his subconscious attempt at intervention. In light of this, it's probably worth asking if Freud is the type of person we really want interpreting our dreams... I always liked Jung better, anyway. That collective unconscious is some heavy ****, man. The thought that there are disembodied essences of character traits called archetypes, living in a panpsychic mental manifold, of which your mind is a small adumbration makes some pretty awesome dinner table conversations... until your dad hijacks the conversation and directs it back to sports.

On that note... why are sports so popular? Baseball is boring as ****, and boxing and football are barbaric. I always figured it had something to do with the human desire to act out our violent impulses, and the social constraints restricting us from doing so. Seems that with contact sports, people get to sublimate those urges by living them vicariously through the athletes. I wonder if revolution would come if we abolished sports. Lord knows, the people would need another hobby in light of that void in their leisure time. Maybe it would be political science, and we would finally realize how backward our government has become... nah, probably not. If sports were abolished, we would just go back to reality TV. ****, there's another rant... **** this, I'm leaving.

Complacency is a disease: one which withers away the faculties of discernment and critical thought; consumes, like the towering raze of a funeral pyre, the forces of vitality and dynamism; and plunges into inertia, the tremendous drive toward innovation innate within the human spirit. We must guard ourselves against its hold upon us, and remain ever vigilant; lest we all should meet our end, and offer up for sacrifice that which, among all other species, makes us so unique.

"In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of our ethical conceptions; and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not mutual struggle – has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of our race." -- Peter Kropotkin, 1902

Awwww, man, I'm flippin', news reports got me trippin'
My mind's busy racin' foot's tappin, I'm pacin'
They say, and I trust, in a few decades time,
That the icecaps will melt and engulf the coastlines, of
New York and LA, and New Hampshire and Maine, and
New Orleans will be but a massive flood plane,
It's a tad bit insane and alarming to say,
That it's been brought about, by our self obsessed ways,
They say India just had the hottest of days,
Ever seen in its history, see, it's a mystery,
Why we don't act, we have limited time, and
The scientists warn us, as temperatures climb,
While republican senators watch and insist,
It's a "liberal myth" and it doesn't exist,
How I wish I could choke 'em and watch 'em turn blue,
Like the color they hate! It just cannot be true,
We're destroying the means for our species' survival,
Proposals for action all dead on arrival,
Cause Exxon and Shell simply MUST have their profits,
So they buy the elections, and silence the prophets,
They lobby with hundreds of millions in bribes, and
Darken the futures of billions of lives,
Revolt now becomes an imperative need,
We must favor each other, instead of their greed,
We must march in the streets, upon Capitol Hill,
Or on parliament buildings, until we instill,
The fear of the ones who demand something new,
Because, we are the many, and they are the few.

don't look now,
here comes
the tax man
he needs some
of your cash,
so he can turn
the middle east
into a giant
******* trashcan
he'll occupy
the Afghans
their poppy fields
are vast, and
at home
we love the
pills that come
from doctors
running that scam

cause we're
a nation
dedicated
to remaining
medicated
our existence
predicated on
duress, stress
and excess
we rack our
brains with worry
as from place
to place we hurry
just as startled
roaches scurry
in the frightened
sight of light
lo and behold!
what we've been sold
In bold relief,
this is our plight!

The tree is a greater artist
Than any man or woman.
Could ever hope to be,
For whereas we sit and strain
Over our words and phrases,
Shaping and revising,
Writing and rewriting,
Ever conscious and ever
Apprehensive of the affects
Which they may bestow
Upon our readers, and
What they mean to us;
The tree simply exists, and
Without judgment, effort
Intention, or pretension
It creates countless patterns of
Incomparable beauty
With the veins of its leaves  and
The grains of its wood that
Even a Shakespeare or Goethe
Could only ever attempt
To describe, however
Brilliantly they may have,
In their tomes.

Guide us into our perdition,
Let your mighty will be wrought,  
Purge our souls of their sedition,
Free us from the bane of thought, and
Quell us with your superstition,
We'll act out your splendid plot, so
Empty us of our volition,
Bury dreams that we forgot,
Fill our hearts to make us brave, and
Give us strength, to persevere,
Help us live as gleeful slaves,
Until we fade and disappear,
Never laughter, ever after,
Wither still, and turn to dust,
The final chapter's violent rapture,
What was iron, now is rust

My jokes are like old air fresheners - they don't make scents.

First,

You became self aware,
Then, on two feet began to walk, and
Then you started using tools, and
Then you even learned to talk, and
You were mommy's little miracle,
The tears would flow in joy,
You were my darling little hero,
And so beautiful and coy,
You,
Used to be,
Such a sweet
Little boy,
You were my life's
Crowning achievement, and
My *****'s pride and joy, and
I know, that
Throughout the years,
I have shown
Anger and neglect, but
Was that enough,
To warrant, all this
Utter disrespect?
I gave within my means,
I did the best I could achieve,
I gave you land to cultivate, with
Water, food, and air to breathe, but now
You've become so callous, and
My heart begins to bleed,
For time has,
Filled your head
With malice,
Now I witness
How your greed, has
Slipped a poison, in
Your chalice, and
Deformed my
Precious seed,
Now, the fact
Of the matter, and
That down to which it boils, is
That the ages
Have transformed you,
Through the years of
Sweat and toil,
The fruits of
All your labor,
Have now begun to spoil, and
You've become crude barbarian,
A savage, gulping oil,
Belching out carbon, and
Vomiting plastic,
The change made you
Deranged, and
You've become
A frenzied spastic,
You lost your empathy, and
Your own kind, came to abhor,
You caused 100 million deaths, in
Just 10 years of "total war," and
In light of all of this, you have
Forgotten all your chores, and
You only know one word, and
Now, it seems that word is "MORE"
Well, perhaps
I've judged
Too quickly, and
I should have given time,
It seems you know
One other word, and
Now, that word it seems is "MINE"
"Mine"...
Like the ones you stripped, of
The resources that I gave you,
To furnish nuclear arms, and
You think God will come and save you?
Well, step up little boy, you
Think that you've got what it takes?
I will prove without a doubt,
That it will be your last mistake
I will push you til you crumble,
I will bend you til you break, and
I will burn your *** up,
Like an overcooked steak
Let me tell you right now,
That this behavior's gonna stop, or
I will flood your coastal regions, and
I'll wilt all of your crops, and
This is naught but the beginning, of
The things that I can do, two
Hundred species go extinct per day,
The next one could be you.

I.

Eyes taking survey
of immediate surroundings.
Habitable? Yes.
Presentable? No.
At least not to anyone
lacking the neuroses which
with such resplendent ecology
were given perennial bloom
in the mental landscape
of this peculiar creature. . .  

Dwelling, as he does
within plaster walls
upon concrete floors
beneath fluorescent lights, as they
quietly hum a low B flat and illuminate
filth and fur amassed in quantities
sufficient to reconstruct entire animals,
and perhaps even ecosystems...

Drugs in their various guises and dis-guises
paraphernalia indiscreetly proliferated
Musical implements, instructions, and instruments
supinely littered, almost as profusely
as the mountains of literature courting
avalanche from the rigid repose of
each supportive surface where they rest

Brooms weeping in neglect of their sweeping as
spiders nest betwixt the bristles, but
at least they keep the bugs out...

Records in crates and stacks with
no particular organization. Hmm.
That last line sums it succinctly.
"No particular organization."
Yet he still unaccountably knows
within this squalor where
the minutest of objects reside

His thoughts and actions
are sporadic, leaving linearity
in want of apt expression
For him, it seems the shortest
path between two points
is a frenetic scribble

Getting things done
in a timely manner? Possibly.

Getting sidetracked and forgetting
the original plan? Probab-  HEY
                                                         DID
                                                  YOU
                                                         GUYS
                                                  SEE          
                                                  ­       THAT?!?!?!?!
 

II.

                                And    ­                  
"Whoever lives this way, cannot be well!"
Someone might say, or, perhaps even yell.
Erelong might this assertion be dispelled
                 With them and their opinion. . . . .
                STRAIGHT TO HELL!

For now the music of Debussy fills the air,
  and now this vagabond has found a locus
  a flag and bond of jouissance and care
  arresting him  in implacable focus

Inhaling the aroma of the night
  he raises up his quill with great delight
  and sets the implement in fervent motion
  and bathing in the passions it ignites

He yields to it in rapturous devotion
  and as if under spell or magic potion
  his brain and nerves and muscles all engage
  in spilling forth the fury of an ocean

Society has trapped him in a cage
  ensnared him in frivolity, it seems
  but his ink abounds in freedom on its page
  and guides him to tranquility from rage  

As Luna pours her iridescent beams
  into this weary poet's dreary head
  his mind illuminates with fate's esteem
  and ruminates through labyrinths of dream

As everything he's seen, done, heard, or said
  becomes a tapestry of order, woven
  with chaos as the impetus that's led
  this blessed magnanimity has shed

A light to guide the way; a path to show him
  to Athens' martyred sage whom he's beholden
  who espoused the noble maxim he's now chosen:
"Look deeply in thyself and truly know him."  

Look deeply in thyself, and truly know him!

III.

"If a cluttered desk",
a man once asked,
"Is a sign of a cluttered mind?"
"Of what, then,"
he continued,
"is an empty desk a sign?"

Today, we bear witness to a post-industrial, consumerist wasteland, under whose all-encompassing totality is subsumed the autonomy of the willing subject, who becomes but an interchangeable gear-wheel in a global machine of production, distribution, and consumption. Individuality is paradoxically mass manufactured, as personal identity is increasingly governed in the public and private spheres by the accumulation, consumption of, and aggregation of preferences relative to commodities. Possessions become both indicators of social standing, and pieces of the psychological anatomy of the individual. Advertising lends itself handily to these ends, playing on the insecurities of the consumer. Products are often advertised as embodying desirable qualities, supposedly lacking in the target buyer: "If you want to be more feminine, wear this perfume;" "If you want to be more masculine, drink this beer;" "If you want  to be more elegant, wear these clothes," etc. Perhaps more troubling, however, is the rate of success of these tactics. In light of this, the questions emerge: are our lives a fabrication? Beneath these tangled webs of associations, who are we really, and if we weren't told who to be from such an early age, who might we become?

We've gotta find a new vessel,
For the waters have capsized,
Submerged and baptized, now
Our thoughts are chastised,
Drowning in an ocean of mass lies, and
Can't see the sky, but
Who am I to say?
To come and pull you from your ways?

I will simply ask:

Today, will you allow your will to be
Detained and contained, and maintain
A state of utter disdain,
With men exploiting your pain, or
Will you rejoice in refrain?
It's only human to complain,
It's only human to question, and
I think you'll find that in so doing,
There's a valuable lesson, and
There's no need for guessin',
I'll just break it to you, and
Say that power spawns corruption,
In the hands of the few,
The pages of our history
Have shown it to be true,
With political dissonance,
Making dissidents indifferent,
Coercive influence invades
The minds of the constituents, and
In a way it just may be,
A new era of slavery, and
It never ceases to amaze me,
How crazy it gets,
We argue over hair splits, and
Ignore the bigger picture,
With a mixture of,
Destruction, and distraction,
Take no action, and lack a
Greater sense of satisfaction,
They say that ignorance is bliss, but
I'm aware and I'M ******, and
It's no lie that once I die,
My cherished views will not be missed, but
Til then I'll keep writing, and hope that
People start fight, and igniting
A new spark to change the lighting, and
Yes,  I realize that it all may seem
A little frightening, but
I forgot, you have a TV, so
Why should you care what I think?

I feel myself slipping,
I fear that my grip
Has come loose, as I
Look at my life, and
I see it confined,
By a noose,

That prevents me, from,
Being the one that I am, as
I'm swept 'round by forces,
I can't see, and don't understand,

Where is love?
Where is truth, or
That wonder
We find
In our youth?
Can you tell me.
Where days go,
What life is, and
What is your proof?
Do we die, with
That question,
That burns
On our lips,
Is it clear,
Who we are,
Where we're going, and
What it is, that
We hold dear?

Can I live, for one day,
That these notions of,
Status will not interfere?
Or when men, do not
Drown all their sorrows,
In whiskey and beer?

Won't you,
Feed me
Your dreams, and
We'll bathe
In the essence
Of love, as
We soar peaks majestic, and
Ride on the wings of
White doves
Through space, and
Through time,
Without pennies,
or dimes
We'll sing songs, and
Write rhymes of
The wealth,
That we
Find in
The health of
Our minds.

I watch and I laugh, as
The structure collapses,
Cause once it burns down,
Flowers bloom from the ashes.

If God made man, in
His own image; he must be
A schizophrenic.

Spike every leader's cup of tea,
With mescaline and LSD, add
Just a pinch of ecstasy, and
Soon the world will be more free.

My jokes are like broken change machines - they don't make cents.

Clinging to my patience with
This relationship we have, but
This game is getting old, and
Now I'm starting to get mad, cause
When I need you the most,
See you running away, but
When I need you the least,
You're back with me to stay.
I fear my mind will unravel, and
My body decay, when my
Days start at night, and
Nights start in the day, see
My feeling is jagged,
My thoughts on the fray, and
I ask you, my love;
Must you treat me this way?
I know, it's always been like you,
To play hard to get, but
You're pushing me now,
Toward the end of my wit, cause
When birds start their chirping, at
Quarter til dawn, the sun
Peers through my windows, and
I start to yawn, but I know it's
Still hours, til we meet again, so
I stare at the wall, or
Close eyes and pretend, and
I toss, and I turn, and
I turn and I toss, until
Finally wakefulness is at a loss.

Only to return to this battlefield again tomorrow...

Tumultuous brain
Physical agitation
**Nicotine demons

The time has come for us to heed the call,
   to blaze the trail with all our wit and might,
   our prideful ways will lead us to our fall,
   if we don't steer our course to make them right,

Cracks are growing within the foundation,
   holes are showing in the great facade,
   doom awaits us in our resignation,
   to lay our lot to waste and then applaud,

Now we must hasten to a firm decision,
   clearing us a higher leading path,
   illumined by the light of our own vision,
   against the darkness of the tempest's wrath,
      
The scope of our potential is immense,
   the soil is fertile for our recompense.

This poem has ten words in it. Cool gimmick, huh?

STAY ADDICTED, STAY AFRAID, STAY ASLEEP, AND STAY A SLAVE!

That's...

STAY ADDICTED, STAY AFRAID, STAY ASLEEP, AND STAY A SLAVE!

and just in case you may have missed, once again, we give you this.

STAY ADDICTED, STAY AFRAID, STAY ASLEEP, AND STAY A SLAVE!