The clichés are our best advice, but you need to live a tragic example before they set in.

                                                    
                                                       36
Do what's been on your to-do lists for months, the thing that's been giving you the most the regret. It will be over too fast, and you'll need a new big thing to put off. You'll try to fill a hole with "productivity;" accomplishing more comfort in your mundane routines.

                                                      
                                                       55
The ubiquitous underbelly of 2024 prevailing ideologies: Nobody wants to feel duped, despite all of them have been flimflammed to high heaven the last ten years (or more).

I didn’t go out last night, like I was supposed to. Sunday during Labor day weekend, and it’s a return to the long grind on Tuesday for my field. So many unknowns will collapse into certainty in one day, which will impact the rest of my year and beyond. So it goes.

I was supposed to go drink at the bar, an old friend is back off the wagon it seems. Yet, my buddy didn’t let me know it was going down until they were already at the bar. I spent most the day at my parents’ in the countryside and just got home. I was already on my second drink alone, and I sensed they were already farther along than me. Do I really want to drive 15 minutes to nurse 3 beers for 3 hours so I can drive back home? My stomach felt upset, so that was the deciding factor for me.

I let down Chuck Palahniuk in that quote where he says writers need to get out into the world, because nothing happens at home. Yet, I felt like I let myself down all summer by not hunkering down and completing all the esoteric music projects I envisioned. I was too tired to mess with my cables, mics, and computers, so I just picked up my acoustic and played. Sweet ethereal major 7th inversion chords and long forgotten riffs. A couple hours went by.  I played the blues riff from “The Last Time” by the Rolling Stones better than I remember. I hit those chords so rhythmically and started to sing. I always thought I did good with **** Jagger’s vocals. I even remembered the second verse. I was right in the middle of it, when I hear my screen door open and some quick slaps on the door. My little dog comes barreling down from upstairs, barking. I look at the clock on the stove. It’s 9:36. I guess some people still need to work on Labor Day. Nevertheless, the city noise ordinance protects me ‘till 10.

I go to my front door and it’s a black abyss, save for a street light showing no one across the street in its feeble glow. I go to my side door, and my driveway and neighbor’s house is equally forlorn. I check the door on the other side of my house, off the bathroom. ****, I left it open to just the screen door. Surely nobody came into my backyard to mess with this door, but maybe it did let too much noise out. Was it the agoraphobic old lady on this side that came to my door? I never even spoke to her before.

Whoever it was, why didn’t they stay to talk to me? I would give you my phone number to make it easier on you if it ever happens again. I checked in the morning again. No note, no nothing. My mind is spinning with unknowns. Was it someone thinking this was the coke dealer’s house next door? Was it kids, checking if my car was unlocked, but then decided on an impromptu prank when they heard my song? Paranoid, I carried my Shillelagh with me the rest of the night.

I caved in, and got quieter. Switched to a tiny guitar tuned in open D, and stopped singing. I still hope they heard me faintly in defiance. I came up with a cool riff and recorded it in my loop pedal. There was a bit of feedback getting it all set up, and I hope they heard that too.



I’m too dense to take hints. Talk to me like a human being, and maybe next time I’ll know it’s you and what you are looking for.

No party offers anything material, just a more complete reification of things into people, and people into things. These hats, bumper stickers, and lawn signs represent more complex personalities than me or anyone I know. And a few folks reading this may be clutching their pearls, “That’s their team, not ours! Don’t you know what’s at stake, what we’re fighting for?” Yes, they’re the same things as 4 years ago. I too understand they couldn’t put real material demands in place, because there’s elections to win. We can’t let these talking points just disappear in success, let alone prevent tens of thousands more deaths.


I used to drink with rednecks at the bar. When we were kids we’d eat dinner at their houses after playing video games for hours. They had custom Dale Earnhardt wooden “3s” on their garage doors, Bush/Cheney and FUBO (F.U. Barack Obama) bumper stickers on their trucks. They called me a ****** because my parents liked John Kerry. Yet, whenever politics came up it was somewhat of a jovial debate session rather than a hateful inquisition. We recognized we weren't so cookie cutter in our beliefs.  We all had a degree of respect for nice guitars, funny stories, and characters.

Now I see their red hat. They remember my deleted Facebook statuses and college degree, and we don’t talk. We’re just things, who are no longer representative of each other anymore.



Nietzsche used to say one should be like a great sea, which can take in polluted streams without becoming polluted itself. Now they’ll find plastic in every speck of water on earth. It’s in our brains, blood, and breast milk.

Perhaps that primordial black ooze became our fungal overlord, pulling the levers to compel us toward our self-destruction. Some failsafe measure by a watchmaking God.



We should have kept up the idea of humanity as mysterious, creative, and curious beings, instead transferring that consciousness solely to our machines.

Many conspiracy theories get the connections and convolutions right. What they get wrong is the distracting end game, when the truth's so clear. Just look at the results. The rich and powerful always escape culpability, escape punishment. If the evidence proves too blatant, creating nets of legal and PR complexities keep the farce of "justice for all," while maintaining their Old World nobility.

Victorian inbreds and mobster charlatans, cutting corners and destroying civic morals, just to grab up more Earth. Soon their cheapness will became ubiquitous. They'll all end up in imploding pleasure submarines, dining on deadly raw foie gras, or barreling off a crumbling bridge in a driverless car.

How does capitalism deeply impact my life?

I want to make music so bad, but I procrastinate with stupid ****.
I clean as if people could come over anytime and judge me superficially. I often go out and shop for things I futilely hope will organize me enough to make cleaning faster. I shop for obscure musical instruments and gear to feel like it'll make making music easier.

In capitalism, owning the machinery is more valuable than doing the work. We ingrain that in our soul, more and more. Negative liberty was always valuable, but when you had less you used to find others to help turn that liberty positive.  

I have a guitar, bass, and drums, but no band. Self-alienation at this point. All my friends play, but don't want to make it a thing.


Our leaders are just hype men and chaos actors to keep the mystery going. "Capitalism may be cruel, but it's the best system we got."

"Capitalism just means people have the right to go into business for themselves." No the owners are subservient to something greater too. They serve capital, they serve the absolution of all. Your automatic answer is "it wasn't my fault." It was incorporated, depersonalized.

So many dead and broken people. So much waste. Digging up so much petroleum, the plastic's in our veins. "It's no one's fault." If by some astronomical chance a concerned public win a Kafkaesque trial, all that's lost is money. No one goes to jail or suffers, if you own enough stuff.

But there's the pickle. "The things you own start to own you," of course, but what's much worse is the Nothing they serve needs to grow, until there's no humanity left. Becoming voids who only seek more efficient ways to delete.

I think I figured out my health woes
and mental ones to boot
It's salt rinses until I can leave it to the tooth extraction professionals
Why is it so difficult for me to make the phone call
Do I still fear I'll be yelled at like I was child?

I want parental validation to ward off these unknown strangers
but I've been getting to know - for 10 years now
I'm smarter than my folks at home
The horror

The trick is to have the childhood faith you once had in them
in yourself - and in everyone else when you're not there
"These idiots will get along just fine. Why can't I?"

I'll make the tough phone calls
Post vulnerable pictures and songs
Deep down, do I just want a partner again?
Dog sitting alone
If I was trapped in my childhood home for a weekend
with some gregarious girl opposite of me
I would be a wholly different person
as I was in the past - 3 or 4 times over

This is the soberest I've been in a year
"Had my tea today without any sugar, no difference"
Except I see the fear and laziness as infinitely surmountable

You're up against propaganda promulgating passive lethargy
on all fronts
Sometimes you need to admit you're better than the herd
and swat away the crab claws dragging you back down
into the bucket of schlop  
Stop feeling so bad for using a few paper napkins
when you couldn't find a washable cloth
You need to break some eggs when humiliating the charlatans
and their fans out of this cultureless slump

I sense loss and yearning all around
I used to chalk it up as a personal hurdle to jump
or just the feeling of aging while the youth still goes on
Yet I think I this malaise is widespread
Impacting all of us in our glitching global trade

I used to think the issue was there’s just too much now
Too much to watch, listen, and taste
You don’t need the hunt anymore
Don’t need to wait or pay some exorbitant price
I used to feel overstimulated by the streams
and just could not decide
I still feel, it’s not that we want to do the thing,
but we yearn to want to want to do the thing
again

Is that all that’s changed?
Those who are not ready to be creators
will certainly not be ready to be curators
Freed ourselves from DJs and TV programming
but what control have we flailed ourselves into?
Wasting hours a day watching 30 second videos
whose categories are heavily curated
impersonally, just for you
Remember when user preferences worked
and in searches they wouldn’t hide the whole list
of all that was relevant and new?

I have an extra dry sense of humor
up here in the most sarcastic city in the country

Down south, they just can't figure it out
They think I'm dumb or
should be institutionalized for the things I say that
they just take to heart with 6 grade reading levels at best
There's no forethought, let alone critical analysis afterwards
Down there
you say what you mean or paint on fake niceties
You leave all the **** talking for when this or that person
leaves the room

There's no cold distance
Strangers will ask where you go to church
No respect that folks may have better things to do
A panopticon of middle school gossip and small talk
so you're never alone

I wish my brother never left
He came back and won't talk to me
after I gave his complaining back to him
in too clever remarks
In Carolina, you're lucky if they get it
on the drive back home

I don’t play my mandolin everyday anymore,
let alone my guitar or tin whistles
I can’t let this die
I listened to 7 year old Japanese math rock
and want just a speck of that
An identity where I can sift right through
all this mediocre destruction all around
No one even has the gall to admit they’re killing
or the decency to even cover it up anymore
They videotape themselves dancing and
murdering kids for lebensraum
then turn around and say “no we’re not”

I’m tired of surface level house maintenance
followed by immobile phone scrolls
I’m looking for that lesson we’ll all learn
after finally going too far
I won’t play the victim or the hero no more
I did my part and now I’m too old
I need deeper art to escape samsara for good
and maybe that’s the best I can do comrades

I’m sick of details grown so scattered and thin
My whole past feels like entrails
smeared across vast desserts
There used to be rainforests here
but now it’s hard to find the pictures

Just when things almost get too competent and nice
they let decadence do its worse
out of fear that the improvements would make goods and services
too cheap not to be free
Socialism’s bad for business owners
so we lay off the workers and overcharge even more
Let the octogenarian billionaires buy up more water and air
to keep the fellas in the favelas gnashing and grim

Bunker complexes, spaceships, missiles coated in spent uranium;
these are all more important than starving children
Why do the poor keep having poor kids?
Still a conundrum
We gave them a chance to compete
some ephemeral time ago and they blew it
What can we do?
We tried to teach a man to fish…
Imagine Jesus Christ just giving folks fish and bread
for nothing in return?

I’m shirtless after
getting too hot in the best kitchen stool spot
It’s where the dog will leave me alone for a sec
It’s a weird winter
every year now, but they say the Great Lakes are
the best place to ride climate change out
It’s been too cold, now it’s getting too hot for this time of year
so the old Watkins Glen hoodie was too much
I almost ripped the front neck like an 80s girl
but I didn’t have the strength
If walks are still out of the question,
I better start doing physical comedy
around the house like Three's Company because
I said I was going to

We could have had it all
we still could
We reached peak performance
we almost reached Star Trek replicators
The whole world enjoying life saving advancements
over a hundred years
Only for it to decline for the first time
instead of just sabotaged into a slowdown like before
Those billionaires want to stay relevant
Even though they’re beyond useless
They’re a detriment to our democratic progress
just to preserve their status as economic royalists
who decry the decline of Victorian social deference

Remember Kurt Vonnegut talking about his school
in the era of almost proficient public funding?
He was excited to have a jazz band
Until these types of things were deemed unimportant
for those who may need them most

Now we have the technology to exceed the speed and competence
of the 80s, 90s, and aughts
but the the profit motive just gets stronger and more depersonalized
We’ll teach them to fish by killing them all

We really thought our liberation for a second
would be found in raunchier shows on TV
less than 20 years ago
They'll be another Comics Authority
to come for what's deemed derogatory
but not really to advance the morality
they tricked the masses to believe

It will start all over
they'll commodify what gradually becomes allowed
over 50 years

I tip my hat to the contempt of corrupt government
but please don't mistake that as being against a collective good
I am an anarcho-socialist cause the proliferation of the individual is only possible in a welfare society
All you capitalist bootlickers will hustle yourself back to serfs
or worse
Where the noble few are the only ones to live free

Now they propagandize you with a promise
you can join their game and be a Capitalist too
Yet the unworking economic royalists
will not abdicate their thrones
So they want you to be grateful for all they provide
a chance to labor under them and be dazzled with distractions
which serfs of the past could never know
Slow economic mobility to a halt
They want a return to Victorian deference above all

Contrary to the pious coldness of our days
us well meaning folks need to realize
it takes grace and tact to deceive and to be deceived
Like playing with a child or a dog
you turn a ball, and just a ball
into a big game hunt

Without the deception that catches us,
the competition, the pageantry, and exaggeration,
we lose interest
We were never not children all along

This too is a game;
wearing plain suits and solely spectating sports
just to out adult each other
So rich men can golf and hunt
wolves from helicopters

2 Drinks
1 Bowl (except weekends)

Take care of your teeth
Eat a fruit and vegetable

I'm sick of feeling stuck in a vestibule
trapped in your armoire
Can't stop searching through your chest of drawers

Looking for reasons not to escape
I worked hard to get here
I just want to sit on my deck
drinking coffee, fernet, and beer
but I'm too busy with my Winchester mansion
to ever settle

Don't know how to avoid gaping emptiness so thoroughly anymore
when mowing grass seems to be my biggest problem anymore
I just don't have the energy
I'm too tired after a morning of forced psychic connections
with folks that would be strangers
if today we had our choice

I played mandolin on the street when I could barely play a chord
and now I get anxious when I play with an open back door
Somehow lost the lifetime of encouragement I got there on Calle Main

All walks of life gave shaking life advice to a kid and his friend
The mayor stopped by and gave us change
instead of trespassing us from the village storefronts

We didn't recognize her but a crazed man filled us in on what a compliment it was afterwards

actions speak louder than words
but if they're too subtle I ain't hearing
I probably missed the whole **** thing
forgive me, forgive me, I'm lost

Please move like a river on fire
these ships are all coming in for commerce
there's a sale on staying on the shore
forgive me, forgive me, I'm gone

But, If you're not here what will you do?
I guess I'll just battle, battle, battle
gotta keep my arrows sharp
and my teeth gnashing
keep dancing till the dirt trips my legs
and you're not rich enough
to give me poison
please take it back
before it's hopeless

No one's more ambivalent than me
its all the same no matter who says it
we're all angels, who don't have to be angels
let's sin, and see if it's so bad

In between notebooks
writing on the back of bank statement envelopes
My money would be in wise temperance
if I didn't haunt auctions for cursed instruments
I got a bargain baglama in route from Greece
it's just the chase
the replacement of writing songs and hard work
I could at least join the fox hunts
but don't forget coming from those that are forced to hunt
Sometimes envious of that pressure again
but don't resent cause it's just weakness
What I can't force myself to emulate
the neo-Malthusianism of my anointed material condition
_________________­

I'm back at it
running out of space
Might have to switch to that student loan
refinancing scheme from Chase
I won't even open it cause
I'm just waiting for society to value
education as a better use of time than
bailing out bankers gambling on the
backs of the poor and middle class that take all the risk
You swindle their paycheck and taxes too
Worshiping at the alter of the greenback printer
Sell your grandma and your grandchildren's future
__________________

I think I ran out of unimportant mail to write upon
I need to do my taxes so I can stop stressing
about hoarding unopened letters
I'm afraid I'll find some catastrophe like a disease
or a stolen identity
There's too much to fear in the 21st century
Yes, how weird
there's no aristocratic family lording over my plot of land
I'm not even a renter anymore except
to the bank and I get my food from multi-national global kings
Much less personal than the ****** that used to rule our lives
Now they're depersonalized into the corporate body
Escaping heaven's mandate
I suppose
Through layer and layer of fabric reality
the market, democracy, technology
is the belief that this whole world is fake
Ascribing deity to digital creators
Bad faith actors
Pretending it's other than profit you desire
"Profit's just a means"
but you need more means to make more means
What's the real product you're peddling?
Do you not have pride beyond the money making aspect?
Why do you highlight such shortsightedness?

150 years ago was the 1870s

Namaste señoras,
          namaste

Bleakness in my future, but not for me alone
In fact, through my friends and modest financial luck
I think I may have escaped the worst of it all

You did your hardest climbing and are resting on a cliff side
My eyes focus too ******* the bubbling tar pits below that
threaten to swallow up the progress of the last century
Instead I should rehumanize my eyes
from this microcosmic eagle sight

An eagle soars above it all between snatching
voles, moles, snakes, and other wretched beasts
To her it's all a day's work
It's us humans that envy her flight and dignify her job
We can choose symbols ourselves

I hope for the best in the world while
knowing nature doesn't care
Whether it's the trees and mountains or
the fountains of hive mind free markets
It's only people that give value to the world

About when I graduated in 2009, America tried on a strange glow up for the next 10 years. Dive bars, chain restaurants, and bumping clubs started to be seen as tacky by young adults. New Ideas, seemingly home grown and more authentic sprung up;  craft breweries, farm to table restaurants, concept bars, and quirky shops selling only alpaca wool socks. The walls and floors were brick and rough wood. The tables were stone and the lights were strings of bare bulbs, dimly dangled over minimalist décor and ferns.

Killing it from Khitomer to Herkimer
Garfield's Insults, Put Downs, and Slams
The light of Truth at High Noon
is not for tender leaves
Will you help me revive this dead Earth?

How can I follow up?
Sipping tea, realizing my dark age in the ides
of March was just a melancholic cover up for
intensive art and getting **** done
"Adulting," I hate that word
We can learn so much from having a child-like nature
But they got you coping with drudgery by
coddling you in comic book imagery
Is your boss your dad that gives you play time or
a **** that's increasingly stealing more of your time, and money?

Stand up if you have the energy
The old don't protest cause
they got nice pensions from FDR and Mao Zedong
We're still the ever lazy young
with distinctive wealth gaps
not seen in a couple generations
It's a grim calculation by cold algorithms
as if that absolves the humans that
put the spirit of the questions into them

How much can we make them work so
they don't have time to protest but can still survive?

We've already stopped the pensions but
how can we stop social security?

It's been well invested
can we really just say the money's run out?

Yes, I suppose they really do believe anything
if you couch it right

Good work everyone.

How would the best user friendly widget
stay that way in a profit incentive?
The physical products escape this unseen
(They're thrown out en masse when profit fades)
The internet’s been a slow fade
from revolutionary layouts and interaction
to the bare minimum you could tolerate
Today most are conditioned not to bat an eye
when the most trusted news sites
are filled with grotesquely glitching ads
that look worse than a 2001 spam virus
Selling sweatshirts with an incomprehensible
automated message containing your last name
Then it switches to threats
the FBI wants to take over my machine

Such is life today
Ignoring what we think we can

Passing through mid-century
these jazz oneironauts reached Apollonian heights
while society drifted into Dionysian drunkenness
the merchants caught on too soon
The most beautiful parts of humanity
enamored to serve the ugliest:
The merchant class, the bourgeoisie
Buddha’s undeserving in charge
If only in past centuries
those noble princesses embraced
even more lowly patronages
all this potential today could be staved off
Saved from the drive to be commodified
People stopped buying jazz as it reached its height
No more smiles to appease the whites
Jazz for the few
the noble, the individual in the know

Until this too becomes the simulacrum
The Ornette Coleman on the bookshelf
to signify your snootiness
your refinement from wealth
Aging Dads in thousand dollar sweaters
kicking out their 22 year old kids
for being ****** addled hipsters
meanwhile Bird on Verve is nodding out
and Dad’s girlfriend pops a Percocet
to deal with all the stress

And you could have given us this and that
but you were in the throes of some spaz attack
Spiral down
your spires of blame
and you end up forgetting all the innocent
in their small existence
Influenced by their helixes
and culture, the temperature
and more than we can comprehend
Forgive yourself first and
you'll stop being such a ******* to all the rest
The malaise of the mayonnaise
Lives of all these unwitting folks

I went from the "overabundance of life"
to a knight of resignation
I'm back to cheap pilsners
local Genny's, union made
Sometimes a Three Heads
when I want to get plowed
I'm trying to refine myself
into a thoughtless identity
so I may taste life again,
make music again
Did I do it all in
the grapes of my youth?
I guess I need a sommelier
for my heart cause
all I taste is river rock
where there was once native berries
and rare spices
Sparks that charmed
The dazzle of a demon
that could cover their faults
You dine or drink with thee
and you're stuck in the Fae
I'm the only one that hasn't stayed

How else can I choose to view this moment?
It doesn't matter what I pick
so long as I can stall
the wheels of that accidental
over rationale

Yes, I'll learn better next time
That's all I need from this
evolutionary process, so
I'll let the wheel slow

breathe and enjoy the superfluous
us madmen threw around
I'll newly choose
what's good and bad about it
No, good and evil

Let that divine multiplicity shine

I gotta salvage my siding
Homie's helping me fix a
hole in the wall
and it's grueling

Other goals today:
Make a Thanksgiving leftover sandwich
don't eat meat on weekdays but I
cheated on Thursday when
at dinner with my parents
Ma won't take no for an answer
for to-go plates
I'm thankful I
still don't live with my folks

I wish I lived alone here
in my home by the river
but gotta save wishes for Xmas
where I'm sure to eat too much
give and receive pointless ****
Every year ma and pop say it'll be
more low key
Imma just gonna get
down in the bass clef my **** self
How vegan is OE?

I accidently created a homunculus
while trying to foster up all the
homologous ways to
see you once more

In that meeting
I hoped to enamor you
half as much as you have me
Instead there’s a 13 armed monster
rolling across the house

branching off realms of reality
that ought to have stayed closed
If I would have left it alone
my wishes and luck
just might have been enough

Oh the Americana days
are waning babe
Feel like I gotta put on spurs
and give those haters the boot

cause you said our love
would grow bigger than
Texarcana to The Ohio
Oh baby didn't you know
the lines in your mama's
old trip tips continue to grow

The distance ain't just physical
it's in my rattling antique thinker
as well as the snow
on them cold smoky mountains
did you really forget to
hang up the phone?

or was you talking to your sister 'bout
that dude at the ranch
from your sepia childhood picture
I found in the locket
you left by the brass lamp

I blubbered all night
hoping he's a long lost brother
you never cared to open up about
Here I am popping another
Genny red tall
while your answering machine's full

Oh whoa whoa whoa
guess this is what they mean
about changes in the fall
I skip another rock across
the whole **** river
but no one else saw

The sand
they let blow back to the sea
eventually
was once a sculpture
a mandala and
a brick to an Atlantean home
How could you just let it all go?
I feel much different
than I once did
and the scenery and cast
has changed
but for the parts that got stale
the dynamics are gone
I can only sing in double pianissimo
The reverberations of good times
bounce around my bedroom walls
nights and mornings before I forget
the broken wish fulfillment dreams
I'm clinging to past lives while
forgetting the flames I fought
I'm done being what I think I ought
from all the fictions wrought
I'm about what I am
no imperfect influences unexamined
I'm me, I'm you
I'm god, I'm my ma and pa
I'm the pub floor stone that
built this town and slapped me around
I understand me by knowing you
don't waste your time
knowing me no more
The caterpillar that overanalyzed
his life never got in that chrysalis
to learn to fly

If I wait to finish my
chores,
to finish my food
all the tiny
notifiers to my superego,
my id
would wither
music, writing, commiserating,
and commiserating
eight-fold path that could
fit in my pocket

I can play
Make children with songs
that have been inside me
half a lifetime
when I picked up an axe
14 year old me
Shyer in most ways
but bolder
in interesting ways
I walked the path
humming 4 noble truths
in between theses

erratic days
I lived a myriad of lives
I fear it’s all
swirling to be the same
Circles within samsara
used to last for
months now I’m stuck for
years
and I no longer
wish to become
unconditioned

Get up off your thinking chair
and ski-doo all your blues away
Drive a cold heart through a snow drift
Realize that the static's too blurry
to rationalize through the fake
So don't look for clues, junior
The facts of life are that sitcoms
are no way to base a future
So all I can do is find breathtaking views
and write words that ought to be listened to
by people kneeling in pews

No, I won't turn off the T.V.
so I can concentrate harder
The point is I want to be so care free
that I multi-task out of existence
I do all the tasks at once
I am
I am
I am
even if you say it
Now, I do all the tasks at once
Music
Podcast
Video game
and the antennae TV hum
so I can't skip no commercials
Have my feelers all over the globe
I feel all the feels at once
I am
I am
I am
even if you say it
Now, I feel all the feels at once
Music
Podcast
Video game
Now, I do all the tasks at once
I am
I am
I am
Even if you say it
I just need you to say it
I am
I am
I am
Even if you say it
I just need you to say it

Crippled inaction
is the fear I'll fail at asking her out
when the moment comes up
or the fear that it will all work out but
it won't feel like enough
Same story for doing my laundry
Same story for writing songs and getting them out

Narcissist that knows he
could be Emperor if he gave it his all
But knees buckle at the thought
of those peons and
what they're saying 'bout me
in their decrees
These bouts, these bouts,
these bouts
Let's run to Nothingness
don't get off the couch
Let's run to mundane business
Everyday I scrub these floors
and someday I'll see us in them
___________

arm around shoulder
the sparkle in your eye
reflected back at me, me, me
You're the sing-song voice of my other
Even though I heard you say no words
I just finished the story I started
the first time we caught eyes, eyes, eyes

They feel like grapes and your
spaghetti hair sure feels like brains
so can I ask you something?
Cause I don't know you enough
to say I'm not a fan but life's too short so
can we shatter some distance?
Like, "Hey I'm not too partial on pasta and sauce
but I sure would like to chat and canoodle on the couch."
Lazy eyes find the forest in your perfect ones
No more mistaken for trees, trees, trees
We're all firmly in this world

Someday last April
I lost my sincerity
Life became too fleeting to blink at absurdities
and after all, it's all you hypocrite logicians
that ****** **** up for me
but not just me
I'm just drones in society

I'm using a machete as a tea-cup coaster
to protect a table that's hacked to bits

Learn to write again
learn to type right
first time in 3 decades of life

I want to write closer to when I think
speed time, to slow it
make it feel like I do more
like I was in my teens or early twenties
****, these days 3 go by and it feels like one

I count my blessings to build confidence
Life grows more cruel but
I might win if I act like already won
Chaos magick, nay we do not speak of it

You forgot to pretend
to suspend quests for rationality
No longer moved by a book or film
We conditioned to be unconditioned
only to realize we ought to been wistfully in the herd
the whole time  
We're the Bodhisattvas forestalling enlightenment
to get drunk with the butchers
after decades of sober high ground
We're the over-analyzers
lamenting our anachronisms in self-assuring
new philosophies
Either fully embrace one or drop out of being smart at all
the only tolerable choice to start to enjoy life again
No, no it's a false dichotomy
I want to be the eternal well-wisher
no matter the decadent displays

The shared dream of a soon to be future
We scavenge and defend
through pockmarked streets
make shelters amid crumbling concrete
We forgot how to imagine a secure society
Measured expectations and social safety nets
they took it all away along with our balanced serotonin
I used to get all jazzed up over a library book
but now the images promise us much more bliss
right around the corner

But it never soothes
never comes close  
We cannot buy the contentment you claimed to offer
so we'll get it in collapse
We'll be sniped, starved, and deranged
but the thought of that life
makes us whisper excitedly to ourselves
"finally something has happened to me."

I, the eternal well-wisher
will wag no more fingers at preachers of death
Neither will I become them nor pity them

You smell like a carnival
in some forlorn town or county
I open the door
and smell the fried dough,
the petting zoo, the bumpkin hoods
with too much cologne
looking at you like you was eyeing their girl
wearing his lanky white arm

You smell like cotton candy,
maybe they could only afford a reptile guy,
the lions club and their burgers and hots
you can only purchase with coupons
The backseat of the worst corvette
owned by the greasiest ugly old man
who has a couple more benjamins than his
old lady's last daddy

Brother, your narcissism is mine inverted
I too almost started speaking with "I" or "My"
but I stayed quiet for a few seconds
I rolled those grindstones in my mind
wondering how much the other knows my faults
"Are they judging me now for my pauses
and speaking a bit out of one side of my mouth?"
So to seem like I'm in the moment
I focused on you first

You're the other way around though, aren't you?
It takes a lot out of you to stay quiet
but even more to act the part
cause you still think that everyone's out to judge
so you brag a strong case for yourself
amid the external world
You ask about others naturally
measure their power over you
Who can be your patsy
and who can you never ask for money?

The hadron collider showed an unknown influence affecting subatomic particles.

“Is this proof of a higher power in the universe?” asked Marianne Williamson.

“Is this Will, is this magick?”

Yes Herr Nietzche, there will always be unknowns in human science as the scientists should have known all along, instead of substituting the most recent names of observations as the replacement of God.

No, there probably isn’t free will but we seem to be life in the unknown with more power than any other around.

This universe may just repeat on and on but what do you do with that knowledge? Can you even help to choose what you choose?

All these past influences and instinctual impulses lead the charge. But there's that spark. That mystery if we can ever really know and comprehend it all with limited senses, time, and minds.

Maybe you don’t have a choice in your life, but you can have the feeling you do. The feeling you can shape your world amid the destiny you feel in your heart.

Practice being a yeasayer to life because that just might be your fate.
Amor fati each time around.

Bread and circuses
Live off unemployment just enough
to eat cheap
get distracted by
the politics
They're so evil
or they're so evil
while your dreams come true

Unlimited access to your favorite shows
without commercials
so long as you got the cash to subscribe
They say generations are the same
you look down on the kids on the grass
They just don't understand
I used to wait in lines at the video store
It was expensive and limiting
but maybe those limitations help us be more human
It was there son
that I first bumped into your mother
We both reached for the same copy of The Matrix III
and we talked about the machines
for a full half an hour
It's then I asked her for her number
I called her home and
had to introduce myself to her mother
Yes, your grandmother

They all feel the same as I
and you will too
Cause our tech is moving so fast that
we got to catch up to the racetrack you were born in
People used to be farmers and
walk the tarmac track  
and slowly pass it on to their kids
that walk just as slow
Then people start inventing
pretentious things other animals don't
and the baton gets tossed to the next walker
who start walking really fast
and now we're at a lightning bolt sprint
A baby's born
and they jump ahead
with the baton in their hand
while we collectively lose our soles
to efficiency

These cheap new shoes
don't last like my old ones

The thoughts sound too forced
too scattered in blasé
Can you blame them?
All I see in one day
all my questions
ready to be answered
the lack of closure leaves me
staring at a screen
hood on
in the snow on my front porch
waiting for the dog to ****
but can't sit in the silence
I check the news
check my stocks
no attention paid
cause the tension's raised
What should I do with my life when I go back inside?

Too many options
Antenna TV
Star Trek all night or stream the same
But which ones to pick?
Maybe I'll check the net to see what's best
cause I already watched them all
still would really like some comfort
from good stories with morals
And while it's on commercials I'll
find something else to do on my phone
I keep doing it
and all the time I'm thinking about work
or trying to move to a better place
or pondering the doom of the human race

What do you keep on your shelf?
The kind you can lock up and hide things
where once we held poor rabbits
pets when we're kids
but mistreated because
in most places and times  
they eat them

not just the kind that's hunted
The illogical culture of America
and all places
Here, it's more humane to herd cows in sheds
than it is to keep small rodents in cabinets
our indigenous and precious pets
deserve crates and cages
Time in the yard when it's sunny
and we can watch them

Burning nostalgic memories
letting the smoke flow out my nose
Cause I resigned myself to just sit and pine
and dream about times where I paid no mind
to past lives

The past five years
I though the world would end
I shacked up with one that decried
my wasted potential in normal jobs
Like where do you get off
if I'm making halfway decent bucks?

The irony of our artsy resurgent humanity degrees
Just go and sell life insurance
Them boomers turned us into gloomers
Generation X, my young parents
the first victims,
at least they had half a fair shake in life
I think the 90s had it right
dripping in yin yang rings and necklaces
so we wouldn't lose our way

Woo wee, where were we?
Hiding from my brother in a clothes rack
with my parents at the mall every weekend
So much confidence in where we were going
The end of history itself
in our careful chaos regulation

Trying to make sense
and maintain confidence in a superfluous world
where you simultaneously have too much choice
but feel like you lack control under indecision.

The derision
looked down upon from those that
were able to mete out a comfortable existence
where they went off toward goals with focus

Now they're maxing
New goals include weekend boat trips, weekday dinner dates, and vacation travel plan always ever posted on the kitchen fridge
Another in the garage just for beer and pop

Can they understand folks that have it rough?
A rockier road to get to the top if there is one at all
Fear to bring children into this world?

Let's pretend we can enjoy the world's decadence
like the oblivious do
Let's do chaos magick
to make our dreams come true
and grow closer together as
the monkey claw closes too soon
and we sit on a pile of
decade old what-if situations
stamped down by unintended consequences
Let's cash in our paltry spoils
and toast to loving fate
Here's to staying together
just for the story
We used to say: predictable, finally
Now we're thinking: routine, help me
The wheel's spinning so fast
it's a blur
Sameness
We're shamans of samsara
cautioning against becoming gods
Fear change
but can you please spare some?
I forestalled enlightenment
just to help you all become
one mushy blob
and now I'm bored

I'm not uptight  
I'm just a bodhisattva
waiting to die so I can leave this world
Wish someone would just give me some spoiled food
so I'll be done for good

When life gives you rotten produce
make banana ***
'Cause it's no use sitting
and ******* about
how our world isn't another one
Drink up
store extra slurp in your tum
Make society so no one's starving
and the kids can have some fun
___________________

­**** your pie factories in the clouds
Bulldoze churches to build parks and playgrounds
Make it illegal for stores to throw food in dumpsters
just so some homeless guy will learn
how to fish in a desert sandstorm
caused by industrial emissions
that our overlords refuse to pick up
themselves or even pay the bill for

You bamboozled fools
just want to watch subliminal *****
on your shiny screens
all to trick you into drinking the
venomous ***** milk from plastic straws
It's all the slaw that the marketers peddle
Indecipherable hacked bits
your mind fractionalized
and trained to keep coming back to bliss
The endorphin kick of these brainwashing clips
Can't read anymore cause I got
a worse attention span than a goldfish
Me and Skipper tried to save the Minnow
but she was no match
for the ocean
Now we're stuck on an island
where we don't even consider
the headhunters human

I forgot what we ought to do
I keep ******* up the signal fires
and coconut powered sonar systems
'Cause I look all around
and all I wanna do is clock the Professor
cause we're fighting over Ginger
It doesn't take a brain surgeon
to season your oil
and if you forget
the vegetarian oyster sauce
can it even still be considered a stir fry, smart guy?

**** it
let's just eat the octogenarian and his wife
'cause I read a study that said
the rich would willingly give up their life
for the economy
Last I checked, sand dollars aren't tasty
so your bone marrow's much more valuable
than your bullion and Nasdaq arrows

Once I feel a little comfort
I'll start blabbering about my dreams in progress
She's so supportive
thinks I'm a renaissance man
for all I find important
all the albums and paintings I've planned
Young da Vinci to a T
Little she know I don't dot my eyes
So I'm just sitting there
looking at a bland pole
with blurry vision
She's too great
so my childish totem's fade
cause all I want is you babe
Streaming binges on the couch
I sense the boredom bubbling up
So I start sifting through that rolodex
of perfect dates in my head
Walking through the naval museum
I still sense things are out of step
'cause a flawless Connery impression
just fell flat
I double down
beat the dead horse
of course, of course
So we sat down on the bench
across from the U.S.S. She don't give a ****
We talk about us
and I'm hit with a brick
"You used to wanna be a rock star
write books, teach college
and travel far
What ever happened to the "Will to Power"
you never used to shut up about
You're just content to be a hobbyist simp
that talks big and likes to hold my hand
I fear I'm holding you back
You've gotten so lazy since we met"
I wipe the brick from my face
and explain that my mind
is the only chains
that stopped me from doing those things
I was never even happy with those lofty dreams
She got me outta a dark place
and I'm content with just
strumming chords on my front porch
and exploring Western New York
So long as it's with someone more gorges than Ithaca
And you'll be my Penelope
She says she doesn't deserve me
but as she stares at Lake Erie
I know she means that I'm not the man she hoped I was
I used to rap about snatching power and holding gold
while beating myself like an opus dei catholic
just for being too lazy and not doing enough
I'm sorry you made me comfortable and happy enough
to live a modest life
(Oh good tidings of comfort and joy
comfort and joy)
Now I'm alone again
and it's opening day
Wreck myself with unachievable goals
just to reel them in
Get secure and balanced 'till
they'll throw me back into the mercury waves
I'm an ancient treasure in the making
don't excavate me.

I'm a pagan that's more Christ-like than Christians
I'm an anarchist that's more patriotic than patriots
While these fools idolize empty symbols of ideology
I'm the optimist wanting to work with my community
to make a better society
**** right I'm inept
I'm raised by boomer tech
you got a life
and are outta debt
Your kids fell in the trap
you set later in life
You're happy with a home and a wife
I'm renting to stay transient
in case my boss decides my career is worthless
Romantic and hopeless
I'll fall for a podcast host just by hearing her voice
and the truth she tells
The Right thinks we'll all flee to their side
once we start making these bucks
where you can leave managing a wally world for oil wells
Well I made it bud
Got the prestige but no full pockets
or pensions to speak of
The older folks got enough crass to complain
'bout their pay cuts and theirs alone
We'll never see piles so grand
Got the inflation calculator app
to proselytize about this scam
But those ears can't hear
unless it happens to them

This body's not eternal
and this mind just might be along with it
soul just might decay with the brain
Sparks of life become ash
and fertilize the lake and sands
where my last wish will flow
by who knows who will be
the last of my loved ones
You're my purest afterlife hope

I sit here in uncomfortable indecision
feeling every itch and twitch, T.V. off
trying to listen to the cellular hum
to reach peace of mind
give in to the fractals and functions
and blaze when it gets too bad

It's the present we forget
I'm always in-between doing this or that
waiting for inspiration
waiting for the stars to align
when my shuttle works fine