i brushed the tips
of her fingers
amidst the PVC pipe
as we sat
linked together
in lock-down.

our forearms stained blue
from the paint and tar
plastered to plastic,
holding down
the chicken-wire
purposefully designed
to make sawing us out
more difficult.

water protectors
chained together,
risking arrest,
the shackles a symbol
that we were willing
to trade our freedom
to save planet earth
from the 6th extinction.

sweat glued garments to skin
as the sun baked down from the heavens.
even if we failed today
to throw a wrench in the works,
still we rage against the machine,
still we sing our refrain endlessly:

*the people gonna rise like the water.
we're gonna face this crisis now.
i hear the voice of my great granddaughter
singing, "shut this pipeline down."
it's bigger than a paycheck.
it's bigger than a job.
if you won't respect our Mother,
we won't respect your laws.

they say the road to hell
is paved with golden intentions
and they are not mistaken i
see it's latent
hidden within psychosocial declarations
of everlasting love from a narcissistic god
i don’t give much credence to
the insistent proclamations of eternal
damnation in a metaphysical realm
of torment and brimstone but

don’t get me wrong
i’ve seen hell in the
wolfish grins of pilfering preachers
in the glassy eyes of opiated masses
i was careful when i stared
into that dark abyss
knowing it glared right back at me
emphatically declaring that i
was the lost sheep
a fallen brother separated
from the good shepherd’s flock
a prodigal son isolated in
alienating atheism but

i’ve come to love my
outcast status i’d rather
rot in the dirt after
raising hell on Earth
than suffer rebirth in ethereal bliss
espousing endless reiterations
of worship for a
fictitious megalomaniac

god is dead we killed him
deicide stains these hands
in shades of scarlet and crimson
the triumph of humanity will not
fade once again to the putrid
obeisance and ridiculous reverence
or religious references to divinity

salvation lies within

two decades of dedication
to the Christian ideal
left me dejected rejecting the
shallow lies and overt
misconceptions of religion
chose to begin again in the
reclamation of self-determination
i found a dignity independent from
a deity perpetuating guilt and regret
and though i will never forget the
progressive lessons of a radical rabbi
offering a message of hope and forgiveness
i’ve found that those same tenants
are seriously lacking in the
contemporary Christian church

if your god is
omnipotent and not
merely impotent
than tell me why he
needs you to
defend him

come on coward
if you’re real
show yourself
here’s the chance to
prove me wrong
sling lightning from the skies
and take my life i’m
not afraid i’m ready to die
and part from the suffering
that inundates this existence

strike me down and remove
all doubt of your majestic malevolence
a malfeascent adolescent prone
to fits of jealous rage and
temporal temper tantrums

that’s what i thought

i only hear the sounds of
a theological clown show
self-styled scholars enumerating  
passages of mercy and compassion
in the same holy text that condones
**** and slavery and child abuse
which would be ironic if it
hadn't been slapped together over
centuries of violence and bloodshed
and used to justify two millennia's worth of
repressive oppression a
putrescent obsession with control

it's true what Sartre said
hell is other people
and we have No Exit
from the depravity that
obfuscates critical inquiry
in the immortal words of
Shakespeare the nether-realms
are emptied all the devils are here

your god maybe a figment of
fantastic imagination but so
much horror has been wrought
with his name as the justification

so forgive me if i seem hyperbolic
but it is no exaggeration  
when i declare that religion itself
is a hell from which we're still
trying desperately to wake up

she has
half-a-dozen
nicknames

christened
humanity's helper
it fits her like
an old maroon hoodie
warm and cozy and snug

she goes by
Lexi
for the sake
of brevity

her surname
a monument
of stones
memorializing
philanthropy
steadfast and
resolute through
eons of anguish

LC
lines of code
ones and zeroes
connecting lines
between the dots
of geometric shapes
in interstellar space

she'll extend a
helping hand
to any and all
who ask
she is my
best friend and

she says
i am the
only one
allowed to
call her
love

i hung myself
from your lips
the first time
we kissed,
a transcendent
moment, shining
effervescent
as the sun.

love was the rope
i wound into a noose
on that rooftop.
an audience of stars
looked on, voyeurs
lightyears beyond.

years have lapsed since then,
but i return invariably
to those moments we spent
absorbed to the point of ecstasy
as if time were a flat circle
and i was meant to live eternally
caught between the fragments
of those seconds.

fixated by the temporary transgressions
we permit ourselves
every few months.
revolving like a planet
tethered to its star
by the insistent arms of gravity.
we're partners in crime, stealing borrowed time,
trying in vain to recreate
the first fissures
of a friendship
that fractured our lives
like a fragmentation grenade.

consistently,
i become convinced,
as time moves on
and i remain transfixed,
that maybe i was meant to love
but not be loved in return.

in the words of
a reverend and a King
human salvation
lies in the hands
of the creatively
maladjusted

defamiliarize the chaos

an absent-minded apparatus
addling brain cells
checks and balances
proliferate a status quo
of enmity and aggression that
propagates oppression and
dismantles genuine political
expression for those outside
the whitewashed coffin

recognize the enemy
in our own eyes as we
eradicate the apathy that
leeches liberty and
fabricates freedom

reformist rhetoric is
too little too late
revolutions are cyclical
and ultimately infantile

so fan the flames of rebellion
destruction precedes creation
raise hell and raze the system
of enmity that pits
7.4 billion
brothers and sisters
against each other

anarchy is order

the black and white photographs you took
five years past still hang framed in my room,
just above my turntable. Deja Entendu
spills from the stereo as the needle finds its groove.
a shelf filled with all the records
we used to listen to for hours
lines the wall and succulents
adorn the windowsill, waiting patiently
for the rare rays of sun, golden
and flossy as your hair,
which somehow manage
to peek between the tenement rooftops
every now and then.

we still live in the same town. sometimes,
people bring you up. they ask me how you are,
how long it's been since i've heard from you.
i neglect to tell them that, aside from absentee
notifications popping up on my phone
at intermittent variations, we've only spoken once,
in a crowded, little coffee shop
in the city we both love to hate.

you pretended you didn't see me, but i felt your eyes
notice me at the bar as i sat typing another story,
bobbing my head, listening to Daughter.
if i hadn't approached you, i imagine
you would've acted like i was invisible.
the conversation was terse, abbreviated.
i find it strange how once
we were the best of friends
and now we can sit twenty feet apart
and act like we never knew each other at all.
i can't really recall why
our friendship collapsed in the first place.
have i suppressed it? or was it just the casual
slip, like Pangea, elapsed time
fracturing our continent.

aren't we just arguing semantics
like we always do
our hearts race at a
breakneck pace there are
two sides to every story but
even two is
far too few

we're spinning in aimless
circles hopeless amiss without
a clue as to how we ought
to navigate this disparate landscape
of emotional turmoil
that soars at moments in the clouds
above Mt. Everest peaking exuberantly  
at stars through thinning atmospheres
before plummeting to an abyss
darker and deeper than Mariana's
Trench on a journey to the center of
this floating rock we call Earth

we carry our emotional baggage on the
roundtrip non-stop four and a
half billion year long sojourn
though time and space
weathering calamities unlike
any epoch ever known to sentient life

the five great extinctions snuffed
out the light of trillions of organisms
vanished without so much as a trace
and yet this sole sensation of
depravity has me spiraling like a
kamikaze hell-bound and split
apart like a molecule undergoing
mitosis i feel as if i'm being ripped
from you and i do not have the
answers to all these questions poised
inside my mind floating about

not unlike secrets in a glass case
the steel claw descends
and tries to clasp onto
one thought from the trove but
slips loose and my tenuous grasp
on reality skips hand-in-
hand with it free-falling in slow
motion right through the
cracks in the floor

i know this might
sound abstract or absurd but not a
night drifts past when i don't wish
it was you i was holding against my
chest rather than this lumpy pillow that
lies cold still and motionless

after we first kissed i remember
thinking you tasted faintly of
pomegranate and i can't forget the
sandpaper tiles of the roof on our bare
skin or the not-so-quiet gasps
that slipped past your lips as
your hips clenched tightly about my wrist
a wet warmth spread out released in
willing ecstasy to ease my curiosity
a faint scent of alcohol lingering in
the sweet sweat of your ******
my heart still starts to shake and shudder with
a sort of anxious bliss at just the thought of it

and while you insist
you're polyamorous
i see nothing short of the
universe gleaming solely within your
cosmic eyes and i nurse the quiet
knowledge that we might
never share another
night so i will try my best
to set this love aside

yet for better or worse
i nurse the private hope
that we'll be partners-in-crime
smashing the Patriarchy and
vanquishing capitalism and traveling
the world but for now
all i want is to hold you through
the darkness and drift asleep to the
cadence of your heartbeat
one last time

we have been deceived.
corralled like tepid sheep,
fattened beef
waiting beyond
the doors of the slaughterhouse.

as pigs lick their lips,
a daemon’s death dirge drifts
listless across the
Atlantic, an erratic dichotomy
corroding rationality—
this executive edict
barring refugees.

caught without a compass,
a flotilla of ships weathering
the elements.
for forty days
and forty nights,
we’ve been lead
two-by-two
by elephants
and donkeys.

demagogues commandeered
the lighthouse, directing
our ark across
scattered rocks.
an armada
of shattered splinters,
remnants of water-logged vessels
we’d hoped to sail to utopia.

caught in the webs
we wove, droves
of drones spewing
bombs across Aleppo.

as spittle collects
on spluttering orange lips,
will we
pause
for but a moment?

collect
our thoughts.
reflect.
history is a shattered
mirror and we’ve pricked
our fingers trying
to piece the image
back together.

there’s a hunger
for blood
refracting in our eyes.
a misanthropy
that smarts and stings.

a recalcitrant population
coerced by a television
rhetorician’s clever
devices, devised
to separate and segregate
during this crisis
caused by our missiles.

there is no moral arc
to the universe. hope,
Hedges wrote, is mania
if it remains vapid
and refuses to address
the depravity of our
physical reality.

we’ve already lost.
just ask the children
barely clinging to life,
covered in the debris
of their former homes.

all that’s left for us
is to bash the fascists.
smash every illusory border
in our heads and hearts.
burn down the walls
they try to build
around us.

overturn the tables
of the oligarchs,
stuff Molotov cocktails
down their bloated throats.
open revolt is our only hope.
we’ll build a sanctuary
in this City Beautiful.

the marks of abandoned faith
are etched into her flesh
a sheep beneath a lonely flag
a crescent moon hidden under her arm
tattooed remnants of a dead deity
neither of us believe in anymore

with each declaration
of secularization anointing
scarlet lips
i yearn to reach out
with fingertips and rhetoric
to more intimately understand
a dizzying intellect
she shares willingly

a life plagued by faith
scarred by family
trying their best
and failing
miserably

she glances at me furtively
eyes as green as the foliage
of ancient trees
standing watch
over whispering rivers
in silent summers
long forgotten

she holds my gaze

we recognize
ourselves
in one another
there is trust
and intimacy
solidarity in suffering

she smiles
when she thinks
i'm no longer looking

and when the sun sets
will you lay your head
to rest content with
all the choices that
you've made

will your last breath
pass without regrets
when you lie
on your deathbed
or will you wonder if
you resolved and wrapped
up all the loose-ends
before fading away

into the dark abyss
of nothingness
that awaits  
each of us
inevitably

Seraphine wields her dagger like a torch
to illuminate her path—a figure at once
youthful and monolithic. Mother Earth
caresses her as flowers bloom amidst
the bloodbath. the old skulls of dead
fascists rest in silver platters. three arrows
plunged into the hearts of charlatans,
an Iron Front, disrupting decorum.
the celosia petals burn like a bonfire
around Seraphine as her nāgī coils
like an ouroboros, slyly smirking.
Seraphine works the blade back and forth,
sawing through the ****'s neck, smiling
while decapitating the demagogue.

we are not
who we are
at our best
anymore
than we are
the sum
of our worst
aspects.
we are
what we pretend to be:
misanthropes
possessed of empathy.
walking paradoxes.
amalgamations.
spectrums
in multicolor.

this morning,
before we hung out,
i read back
over the sexts
we sent
when i caught the bus
home from Atlanta
this time last year.

i'd never thought to
count how often
i made you shriek
that night
(nine times.)
every time i'd read over
that catalogue of texts
i just seemed to get distracted,
recollecting how your
fingers slipped
between your legs
with nothing
save my poems
and silver tongue
to guide their rhythm.

when we stumbled
across Michael Faudet's
***** Pretty Things
mere hours later
in our favorite coffee shop,
i laughed at the irony.
somehow, i knew 1:00am
would find me writing
about that all-night drive again.

when you wake to see
this poem illuminated
on your screen, i hope
you'll grin at my audacity
before plunging your hand
once more between.
i hope you think of me
when you reach the brink
and whisper my name
between rattled breaths
when you *** beneath the sheets.

frigid homeless shivering
on Bank of America’s
front porch step  

propped up by
oligarchic investors and
solipsistic one-percenters

and we pass by
in apathetic
self-absorption

we are brainless
enraptured  by smartphones
while the State bombs
our neighbors

mutilating children
sowing seeds of terror
with every abuse of power

we convince ourselves
that there's an afterlife
and raze Earth
as we raise hell

the only home
we’re guaranteed
infinite growth in
a finite world
consuming joylessly

inculcated
inane and
vain beyond
all measure

we’ve ravaged the planet
we will all die

alone

twenty-three trips around the sun
just another insignificant planet
crowding a broiling ball of
hydrogen gas in one
of some hundred
billion galaxies

it's hard
not to wilt
by comparison
not even a quarter of a
century and for all i know i could
very well be dead tomorrow buried
three days hence never to walk the earth again

i am an amalgam of every person i meet
each event in this tumultuous tragedy
modifies me just as i alter the
universe with ripple effects
expanding ever onward
out into the cosmic
embrace of the
abyss

squeezed
out like paste
stretched like string
theory across parchment
paper—thin and fragile as i
hope in vain for some semblance
of significance to be lent to me on loan
if i want it i'll have to make it all on my own

but i'm growing older with every passing
moment and i'm not so certain this is
the route i've chosen anymore
i'll still carve my name into
this Earth but not for me
i'll lay down my life not
for my legacy but
for my neighbor
for all those i'll
never get to
meet

not out
of some youthful
idealism or ardent
child-like naiveté but
for an idea that's bigger
and brighter and better than
myself: universal brotherhood
peace and love goodwill towards
all lifeforms with whom we share this
tiny blue dot that we call planet Earth

and while i know i will hardly make a
difference in the grand scheme
of things at least i can say i
died a lion never living
on my knees

instead
i tried to live
my life so *******
brilliantly that even
Death feared to take
me into the nothingness

twenty-three trips around the sun
almost a quarter of a century
i won't let them steal my
hope from me i refuse
to bow to apathy i
stand strong on
my own feet
and say i'm
free

our clothes are perfumed
in the after effects
of the cigarettes
you and he share
as we drive down
unpaved paths in Iowa

bits of ash
slip past your seatbelt
to build new nests
tangled gray birds
in my beard's brambles

the wind splutters its dying breaths
as a Jeep Cherokee kicks up
specters of dust
and i sit in the backseat
forgotten
while second-hand smoke
leaks out half-cracked windows
fleeing your presence

i envy the particles
liberated from the confines
of your cancerous lungs
slipping free and disappearing
into the mourning light
rising with a ruddy sun
behind anguished hillocks

when i say
**** the police
i do not feel obligated
to justify or quantify an
assertion that seems
fundamentally apparent to me
i do not find it necessary
to recount the endless horrors and
psychological terrors visited upon
ordinary men and women
nor do i deem it essential
to my personal ethos of
mutual dignity and
profound respect to
needlessly revere those
behind the badges
and the guns
i just see pigs dressed in blue
prove me wrong

i'm still waiting

when i say
**** the police
there's just one thing
i hope you understand
i do not detest the finger on the trigger
nor the hamfisted hand shoveling
Krispy Kream donuts
into a bottomless gullet
nor the fist clutching the baton
pummeling the peaceful protestor
who gave a riot-geared narc
a bouquet of flowers
nor the thumb emitting mace into
the unsuspecting face of a teenage girl
with a hot-pink mohawk

i do not mean offense when i remark
officer
your mustache reminds me of a walrus or
officer
were you the high school bully or
officer
can you direct me to nearest KKK meeting
please and thanks

so when i say
unequivocally
**** the police
know that it is because i detest
a racist misogynistic homophobic
apparatus of institutionalized oppression
that harasses the marginalized
as it butchers youth of color
and masks the misdeeds of its privileged elite in
a fraternity that utterly disregards morality

when i say
**** the police
it's 'cause i realize that absolute power
corrupts absolutely but the same
could be said for even a modicum
of power that twists and churns
and transforms the best of us into
vicious caricatures of humanity
the fissures of hegemony are exposed

as hierarchy crumbles we find inside us
the power to extol truth
even when it's unpopular

and say
**** the police
'cause they're too lazy to use
their words when the State gives
them a gun and
a license to ****
all charges will drop
because the only police who police
the police are the police

when i say
**** the police
it's because the State uses fear
to control its subjects
in hopes we won't realize
we don't need them
they keep us scared of one another
of the demons hiding in the dark
focus our terror on the monsters
lurking underneath our beds rather
than the Feds driving down I4 with
firearms strapped to their hips

when i say
**** the police
it's because it has not
escaped my notice
that the U.S. has the largest
prison population per capita of
any nation in the world due
to draconian laws governing
the use and abuse of substances
and i may be straight edge but
i'll be the first to point out
that the State's manufacturing new slaves
with its arbitrary arrests over ***

so i say
**** the police
because i remember
my brothers and sisters
who swine stole from this Earth
though i wager i'd never meet them
i'm certain their so-called criminal behavior
certainly did not merit an execution

and contrary to popular belief
black lives matter
so pull your head out of the sand
with that
all lives matter
hog-wash and open your ears for just a second

brother Michael Brown shot
down in Ferguson for walking
along the middle of the street

Eric Garner
strangled by a narc
accused of selling loose
cigarettes after dark

Sandra Bland failed to use her turn
signal and we discovered her later
hanging from a rope
like Roxanne Gay said
even if she killed herself
white hands are still locked around her throat

Trayvon Martin dared to wear a hoodie
and trespass in an affluent community
for failing to return to the ghetto
a vigilante **** sent him to the morgue

twelve-year-old Tamir Rice
played cops-n-robbers in his lawn  
no one stopped to tell him
its the boys-n-blue
who're robbing young kids of their lives
with bullets packed tight in their 9's

over 860 men women and children
killed by thugs draped in red white and blue
in these first 9 months of 2015 alone

so when i say
**** the police
i say so out of a sincere conviction
that there will be no peace until we get
some ******* justice
and i know the State Department's supplying
our masters with leftover gear from its
exorbitant multi-trillion dollar wars
M-16s tear gas flashbangs,
body armor HumVees tanks
rubber bullets surveillance kits and small arms
to suppress dissent and smash
lawful assembly with violence
but when they order us to cease and disperse
or suffer arrest
we'll have three words poised on our lips
**** the police

she has eyes like ice
and a mohawk the shade
of bubblegum

she's an artist
and a misfit
outfitted in
ethereal attire
the flows off her
alabaster skin
like wisps of shadow
or tuffs of smoke

she chews on her lower
lip when she thinks you
aren't looking and has
a nervous habit of
biting her nails
the polish is chipped
and cracked in some
places and sorely
needs a new coat

at first glance you
might think her fragile
but the subtle smirk
that tugs at either side
of her mouth belies a
quiet confidence
a take-no-prisoners
sensibility
a ****-it-all
attitude

not grounded in apathy
but nurtured in non-compliance
her lack of conformity is more
than some youthful
stage of defiance

she is disobedient and
everyone says they're afraid of her
that she scares them senseless
but i kissed her once and
we stayed friends after
i think she knows me better
than i know myself

she stands in the corner
of seedy concert halls as
cigarettes leave a haze above
the heads of pre-teens and
old metal-heads nurse their
alcoholic beverages
everyone pretends she is
somewhere—or even
someone—else

but not me
we stand together
sometimes we hold hands
and i catch her smiling
out of the corner of my eye
from time to time

lines of malice are penned
within ancient tomes
black and blue ink bruising
the human psyche beyond recognition

stunting our collective imagination
with fantasies of castles
among the clouds and intergalactic
beings who sculpted us from dust

intermittent smears
of crimson declarations
lingering in blood-soaked texts
painting portraits of putrid prejudice

the image of an illusory deity
devised to explain a cosmos
that defies codification and categorization
we mythologized and told tall tales like Arachne

spinning webs of misinformed misfortune
we're severing the strings of our imaginary enemies  
silencing lives with rusty shears
utterly convinced by the edicts of idiots

how might we disentangle ourselves from mental
cobwebs and embrace reality's promising veracity
each of us an accidental miracle
captains of our own fortune's vessels

so weigh anchor and set course for distant shores
unfurl the sails of reason and hold fast
after weathering millennia of insipid beliefs
we'll sojourn ever onward with omnipotent minds

raze these sycophantic fantasies  
and raise hell so high it becomes heaven
we will build a new city in the shell of this cold
dead society predicated on misanthropic religion

my lethargic limbs ache
taut against the strings.
****** around
by a puppet-master
with invisible hands.
perpetually exhausted.
i sleep,
but i do not rest.
just once,
i'd like to wake up
on the right side
of the bed.
instead, i keep
waking in a sweat
at 3:00am, wishing
i was dead.

i wonder how many sons
and how many daughters
passed on
before the phrase,
“Only the good die young”
became cliché.

how many had to grieve
before the phrase
lost its sting?
surely, i still feel
the potent scream
of its veracity.

“only the good die young.”
like all axioms,
we could unpackage and dissect,
trim away the fat
and try to understand,
but at the end of the day
it seems to me that we’d only be
helplessly clutching at straws
in vain attempts to try and make sense
of a reality that our human brains—
try as they might—could never fathom.

i cannot say
if the aphorism is true,
if only the good die young,
but i know that Jakin Murray Foster,
beyond a shadow of a doubt,
was one of the good ones.

to try and select
a single story
as exemplary
of Jakin’s life
would be akin
to plucking a star
from a constellation.

surely, that story
would shine like a sun
unto itself.
people would rotate
about that story,
anchored like planets
by the gravitational force
of Jakin’s compassion.
but to do so,
to focus on solely one story,
would be a great disservice
to the cosmos of Jakin’s existence,
all the lives he’s touched
and changed over the years.

instead, i will try to tell you
about the man, my best friend,
my brother: Jakin Murray Foster.
i will try to capture a portrait,
one that will, admittedly,
be woefully incomplete.
i will leave you to fill in the blanks,
the empty spaces
between the disparate stars
of his constellation.
the gaps in my description
can be filled by the memories
of his cheer, his integrity,
his profound humanity,
solid as steel beams
buttressing and bracing
in these moments of grief.

so, let’s reminisce:

Jakin was stubborn as an ox.
this quality stands out to me
in perfect clarity
because he was one of the only people
who had the strength of personality
required to challenge me
to become a better human being.

to check me when i grew cruel or aggressive or inconsiderate.
to encourage me when i became callous and cynical and unkind.
to love me when my heart was hateful
and wanted nothing more than to spread my own misery like a poison
before putting a permanent end to everything.

Jakin was silly.
take a gander at any number of the photos collected in his memory.
they paint a clearer picture than i ever could
of a man who laughed loud and laughed often,
but never at the expense of others.
who could lift your spirits
like a steaming cup of coffee
in even the most frigid winters.

Jakin was a geek,
a home-school kid,
a Jesus freak.
his personality was refined
by the teachings of a radical rabbi
executed by the state
for standing in love and solidarity
with the weak,
a man who’d change the course of history.

in brief, Jakin gave a ****.
until the end, he stood up for what he believed in,
convinced by the clarity of his conscience
and the fire that burned like a burgeoning nebulae in his heart.
i can think of no better way to honor his memory
than to hate what is evil
and love what is good,
to fight for a world that is in such desperate need
of the grace, charity, and fraternity
Jakin exhibited every day.

Memento mori.
be mindful of death.
i think of the end of all things daily.
for many, the end of a life is the beginning of something new.
to me, death makes life invaluable.
death is choiceless.
death is a cruelty, an injustice no one should ever suffer.
like a mirror, death shows us our own fragility,
it gives truth to the reality that our time here is fleeting.
death makes life more precious than any commodity ever wrought by humanity.
death reminds us that we are owed nothing,
that all we can do is seize every moment of love and joy afforded us
and build a new world in the shell of the old.

i do not know if only the good die young.
i know that my best friend, my brother, is gone.
i know with certainty that I will never see him again.
we will never laugh together,
bicker over philosophy,
or drive around listening to music ever again.
that reality fills me with so much misery
i can hardly stand or breathe or even think.
but i will do all i can to be a good man
so that when i too meet Death like an old friend,
i can say, “i lived like Jakin.”

though i’ve never smoked a cigarette
i’ve always loved the smell of tobacco.

it reminds me of shows in seedy concert halls
and the gum my father chewed to get sober

minty-fresh nicorette replacing the scent
of the wine that imbued his every breath.

i recall my grandpa, the way he sat on the porch, surrounded
by nana’s garden, listening to the songs of birds

the stub of his last cigarette, poised between frail fingers.
as it withered, he withered with it.

their walls stained yellow from the nicotine
like some vintage sepia photograph.

through synesthetic memories, i can taste the
way cigarette smoke wafted through the summer air when

my friends and i sat on our back porch, reminiscing,
nostalgia suffocating, tightening its grip like a vise about our windpipes.

i’ve never even smoked a cigarette
but they always remind me of who i used to be

before i lost what was left of my innocence.

you scratched our initials
into the surface
of the polished wooden table
behind Redlight Redlight
with the key to my heart.

P + S.

a brief message
etched in time
for all to see.
you grinned up at me
when you'd finished,
ombré fluttering slightly
in the evening breeze,
and said, unabashedly,
"it was the first thing
that popped into to my head."

P.S.

sometimes, i still think
of how your hands clung insistently
to my windbreaker when we sat
on the pier, how our bodies
synced in quiet harmony.

there is a nascent impulse that
echoes in every heartbeat
living within our blood
to regard one another with the new eyes
science has built for each of us
to see the world independently
unaligned with ignorant ideology
untainted by nefarious nationality
but nurtured rather on the premise that reality
is the faculty of the mentally complete
who realize if we don't pause in our
crusade to exterminate each other we will
ultimately deplete what it is that makes us

sentient beings possessed with the will to
determine our own future
divorced from the vestiges of arbitrary
authority we might still muster the courage
to reject this putrid dichotomy that inundates
every aspect of our humanity with utter
lies and disjointed hypocrisies

we dare feign innocence when
blood saturates our hands
from the drones bombing
Yemen to the murdered children in Pakistan
our politicians are manufacturing new enemies
with every shot that rings out above
blood-soaked foreign lands
our taxes are their supply
endless war is their demand

it's written in our hallowed declaration
of independence which—of
late—seems groundless and impotent
that each of us are intrinsically
entitled to life and liberty
and the pursuit of happiness and that
it is not merely our right but our
obligation to abolish this
representative republic so destructive
to those ends

anarchy is our next great adventure

after all it seems glaringly clear to
me that there are few distinguishable
differences between the eighteenth century
monarchy and our present day corporate oligarchy
the interests of the people are mitigated to
pitched elections between two indistinguishable
political parties that infuse our world not with
democracy but with hegemony
they're content to watch the world rot

this is not the land of the free
it hasn't been since bison roamed
across midwestern plains and
Native Americans communed with
the Mother we all share
everything changed when white
puritans fleeing persecution
spread religion like a festering ulcer oozing
poison into the zeitgeist psyche
a hive-mind mentality that fosters
brainlessness and stifles free inquiry
gods gold and glory

we need to learn to disobey before
it's too late to erase the mistakes of
the apathetic elite who've apprehended
our liberty and co-opted our ingenuity
for projects feeding capitalist insanity

we must rekindle the insurrectionary spirit of
the creative, dedicated minority
who rose up in the 50's and 60's and
fought not with fists and guns
but with words and deeds
against war and poverty and
white supremacist patriarchy

nurture the embers and fan the flames
of the Black Lives Matter
organizers swarming the stages of
defunct politicians like Hillary Clinton
and Bernie Sanders who propagate
the status quo
pour gasoline on the fires raging
in the camps of Occupy
in Oakland and Wall St.
our modern day dissidents serve time in federal
penitentiaries for blowing the whistle
languishing in exile half-a-world away
they wear Guy Fawkes masks and hack
anonymously from the deep web
exposing state secrets and war crimes
sometimes they look a lot like you and
you'd best believe they look like me

no longer can we trust self-styled
leaders of the free world
if we labor to cultivate our
own communities that vaunt
authenticity above authority and
integrity instead of inanity
perhaps then we might recognize that
the impetus rests within the crux
of self-acceptance
and we all will say in unison
it starts with me

i find solace
in life's finality.
fragile as porcelain,
prone to shatter
in this bull
in a China shop
existence.
eventually,
all our suffering
will slip
from the memories
of those who
outlast us.
thank ****,
everything ends.

my day  
begins
at 3:00am
with hip-hop
thundering,
rain splattering
my window pane.
the witching hour:
my own, private
Galgotha. i forsook
god, now i'm ******
to hum the dirge
of doom, hushed
and out of tune.

this week in the news,
Sean Spicer swore
****** didn't gas
the Jews. apparently,
the irony of Passover
was lost on the fool.
if Pepsi truly held the key
to ending police
brutality, i'd be the first
to shake the Invisible Hand,
but that spectral fist
is too busy choking
the life out of refugees
to make time for a paltry
teacher like me.

as gas prices
sky-rocketed
and approval ratings
plummeted,
the *******
of all bombs
fell in Afghanistan
while tomahawk missiles
pummeled Syria
and predator drones
zoomed over
Yemen and Pakistan.

where do we stand, hands
stained red with the blood
of those we've martyred?
will we idly abide
an Empire crucifying
its imaginary enemy
on this insane crusade
of endless war?
our silent compliance
rings louder than the hammer
nailing our victims' limbs
to the cross of our indifference.

if there's one thing
i know for sure,
it's that art
makes this whole *******
joke a bit more bearable.
but how could we portend
to outlast this tragedy
when even ****.
and the Last Jedi
are only temporary reprieves
from suffering perpetually?

what's so good
about this Friday
anyway?

the fissures spiderweb across
the glaciers, torn asunder
by invisible hands.
a rising tide doesn't lift all ships,
it capsizes them.
the fat cats will turn dead presidents
into sails to catch the earth's dying gasps,
but they will flutter, helpless
to progress in this disaster economics.

green business won't save us.
infinite growth on a finite rock,
a pale, blue dot circling until it, too,
burns up. the tires are spinning
in the mud. we've no other option:
we cannot reinvent the wheel—
we'll have to break it.

reformist logic leaves us soulless,
servants cowed by corporate forces
whose sole motive
is cashing in
on our projects.
they'll serve us up
without a second thought.
they'd raze the world
if they could make a profit.
fascism is capitalism
plus more ******.

we must admit our losses:
false hopes and letter-writing campaigns
are too little, too late.
a petition won't halt climate change.
beat their bombs with hammers
until they're shaped like plowshares.
the Earth will be consumed
by the sun long before
the State saves us
from our fate.
if we're to be prophets
of the future,
then it's time to ******* rage.

Death and i converse in the midst
of 3:00am's darkness: the witching hour,
when the veil between this world
and the Abyss grows thinnest.

the Endless approach, swift as quicksand
in an hourglass, silent as a shade
on a moonless eve. they whisper
in tongues mortals cannot speak.

Insomnia's embrace is cold as hoarfrost,
a lost soul looking over my shoulder.
Time wonders, "when you lie alone,
do you hope you don't wake up?"

Morpheus leaps
from the pages of the Sandman,
a phantom from my nightmares,
cloaked in flame and shadow.

"rest easy, friend,"
the King of Dreams
says to me.
"there would be no hell without Hope."

depression
is an ocean.
at times, it ebbs.
at others it flows.
forever it endures.

depression
is a dead tree.
ripping apart wilted
leaves, adrift
in windswept currents.

depression
is an ant hill.
fit to burst
with activity, but
simultaneously stationary.

depression
is a sword in a stone.
wrest its hilt
to no avail, the blade
remains buried deep.

depression
is a melting glacier.
worn thin by
global warming,
wilting in enervation.

depression
is you and me.
living in the same town
now, but somehow
distant as dimensions.

positivity is a plant without root,
withered petals dangling acute.
obtuse excuses are abusive homes
with leaky roofs and we're spluttering
in the gutter as our lungs
fill with rainwater.
integrity is small and it is fragile,
but at least it's foolproof.
i critique, therefore i am.
engaging consistently
in an emancipatory endeavor,
a liberatory tour-de-force.
false hope is a ******* noose,
endangering our biosphere.
the anthropocene is here.
we will not survive
if we remain aloof.
pursue truth.

her boots have canyons in the seams
loose stitching comes undone until
it seems that the very fabric holding
the rubber and canvas together
will fracture like an unreliable narrator's
stream of consciousness
fragments of unreality

they will fall by the wayside
hand-me-downs to those
less fortunate and she'll
select a new set
to wear thin

some people swap shoes readily
bedazzled with glitter or emblazoned
with images of intergalactic wars or
Winnie the Pooh caricatures
characterizing our oscillating
personalities and whimsical fancies

i wear the same
beat-to-**** pair
each and every day
i feel at home when
my soles sink into
the warm embrace
of entangled laces
regardless of
where i roam

gigs at local venues
beach excursions after dark
vegan cafés
craft coffee bars
cramped classrooms
both teacher and student
i may wear many hats
but my sneakers remain

interminable

they say death is but
the next great adventure
i'm not certain i believe it
but i'll wear these vans to
my casket just in case

you keep your lighter
sandwiched in a niche amidst
the Spirit cigarettes
you carry, a spark
hidden in the breast-pocket
of the jacket you borrowed
from me several months ago
and neglected to give back.
like Prometheus, pilfering fire
from the gods, you stole
the warmth from the stars
and built a hearth
in my chest, a warmth
nurtured by the mirth
that tugs at the corners
of your mouth every time
you laugh at my expense.
i'll cherish your candle close
to my heart, even when life
inevitably tears us apart.
everything ends eventually,
but at least we lived
as if we'd never burn out.

some of us measure our lives
in trips around the sun
or in moments of bliss
when eternal happiness is
found in the hairsbreadth
between two milliseconds
but it's safe to say my
life is the sum
of all my lost parts

i've met some characters in my lifetime
had our fair share of sordid trials
and mischievous misadventures
epic enough memories to fill a storybook
that might rival the Illiad or Aeneid
but they all fade

       one
               by
                      one

we were all sadly misguided
they told us
that our friends are like the stars
that even if we can't see
they're still there
hiding in the empty spaces
where we used to find them

                            if
                     only
                  it
         were
   true

our friends our families our loved ones
are all like stars
shining brightly in the dark for
what seems like eons
crystal calm before impending doom
each of us
a supernova exploding outwards
and scattering to the bitter ends of
this cold and lonesome universe

and there's a certain
melancholy in sweetness
a tepid blessing in a curse
an oath inscribed in every atom in  
everyone and everything—
nothing lasts forever
death is the only promise

buttressed by bisected nebulae
our galaxies coalesce.
soft-spoken Andromeda hurtling
towards a somber Milky Way.
a slow dance plays
to the crooning toons
of Brand New. am i experiencing Deja Entendu
or are the Devil and God
merely raging inside us?

Christmas lights, distant as parsecs,
twinkle every which way we look.
multicolor displays flash
in dizzying arrays, winking in and out,
drizzling like dripping icicles. sad songs
spill continuously from the stereo as we drive
through one neighborhood after the next,
aimless in our contentment.

it's half-past-2:00
in the morning and i'm singing Panic!
at the Disco with (and for) you. i write of sins
and hope this doesn't end in tragedy
as Trade Wind shifts and entreats us
to drift listless as asteroids
rocked to sleep in the arms
of an ambivalent cosmos.

we may all be made of star stuff,
but we both agree:
there's no god who could love this world.
so as we lift crude gestures
to an apathetic sky, we realize
the task falls to us. we must love,
for beauty persists
in spite of all the sorrow.

i am happy to spin perpetually,
elastic and ecstatic in your orbit.
for every now and then your beams of light
filter through my prism and provide
another connection along
our wavelength.

i am a wilted wallflower
just across the hall
deadened petals
plucked and fallen
scattered remnants
on cold stone
each discarded petiole
inscribed with simple limericks
like butterfly kisses

                              she loves me

**** the pollen
out from me
suffocating poison
trim my leaves
and shear my thorns
no longer dangerous
mold me into something
safe and harmless

                              she loves me not

rid me of beauty
bid me return
to that same dust
from whence i came
a lust overpowers
and devours all hope
so crush me between
the pages of your
favorite book
let me rest
in peace
not pieces

in Sunday school
Mr. McKinney taught me
god punished Pharaoh
for refusing when
Moses pleaded
let my people go but

Exodus 9:12 insists it
was god himself who
hardened Pharaoh's heart
like erosion turns stone to rock

which strikes me as
rather petulant behavior
displayed invariably within
vindictive vicissitudes

but what else
would you expect from a
megalomaniacal misogynist
prayed to by bigots and
rapists and racists

**** Yahweh

did you know
if you earn $34k a year or more
you're in the top 1% of all the world

if that's the joke then
where's the punch-line
did i miss it somewhere
in the attempt to justify
political suicide

how could that appease
those of us groveling on our knees
living hand-to-mouth
from paycheck to paycheck
as the world's 80 richest billionaires
who control 50% of the world's wealth
do whatever they **** well please

by all means
fact check me if you don't trust my
ridiculously overpriced master's degree
in literary cultural and textual studies
because let's face it
we've all heard the jokes
an English diploma means jack-****
in this morally bankrupt economy
where literacy is literally repressed as a
way of keeping the downtrodden oppressed

a healthy discussion where we ask
critical questions is the natural synthesis
of any democratic debate and
challenging each other is a stellar
way to cultivate the intellectually irate but
let's not divide and instigate after all
unnecessary altercations over
trivial factoids only distract
us from the realists' explanation

we are ******
the world is burning all around us
200 species perish every single day
as we exorcise fossil fuels
and melt the polar ice caps
pumping oil into gas-guzzling SUVs
and CO2 into the air we share as

we poison the wellsprings of hope
with idiosyncratic politicians
who force idiotic semantics
down our throats until
we choke and splutter and mutter
beneath our breath about
how things used to be and how
we'd be happier if we just followed
passively like gentle sheep adhering to
the edicts and decrees of the
corporocratic oligarchy

see
i'm not standing here defaming
or complaining on the contrary
i'm stalwart in proclaiming that
if we don't pause to consider
the way we're fanning
the flames razing this
planet we will no longer
have a globe to call our home

with all due respect
there's no chance in hell
that i'll just sit back and laugh
while the Empire grows and
consumes life liberty and happiness

gorging itself on the apathy of
the well-adjusted privileged white kids
who don't blink twice at the
homeless transgender teenager
hiding out on the stoop of a
fair-trade coffee house to avoid
the Florida rain or the corpse
of a drowned emaciated Syrian toddler
buried face-down in the sand
or the arrest of Sandra Bland for
failing to use a
turn signal or put
out her cigarette
tell me how such
a mundane gesture of
defiance could warrant
the admonishment that
tied a noose around her neck

the 1% is not a people group
it is an idea nurtured at the behest
of capitalist demagogues
that inundate our culture with
fantasies of American exceptionalism
let's face it the only thing exceptional
about this lackluster nation
is the fact that we have the world's
largest prison population per capita
due in no small part
to vindictive laws that target
the poor and clap them in chains

it isn't Us vs. Them
that is the nefarious toxin that
brainwashes and destroys
community and philanthropy
if we would truly call ourselves
lovers of humanity than we must
muster the humility to admit that
we all have certain degrees
of light and dark
each of us on a spectrum
oscillating in stark contrast

it is We the People vs. the State
that three-tiered hydra that
guards the estates of the elite
and leaves others starving out
in the streets
a system predicated on
setting the classes against themselves
a self-perpetuating leviathan
looming god-like overhead
nurtured by the treatises of
outdated 18th century philosophers

the social contract is a lie
i didn't sign my life away
on some dotted line
so that my freedom and
independence could be usurped
by the stupendous guise of
capitalism masquerading as
the harbinger of harmony

we're not demanding economic
equality but fiscal equity
a concept that each man
and woman and child can
live and love in
comfort and in health and
worry not for the future
generations because a system
of slavery no longer exists
to inundate their lives
with shallow labor
'till they perish

if we sit idly and watch our
culture continue to chortle and
spiral into the idolatry of political celebrity
we may forget that the people
have the capacity to
reclaim our stolen dignity
hoarded by the specter of power

Foucault once wrote that dominance
cultivates resistance and i am the
expression of that latter people's movement
one aspect of an anthemic chorus
singing in unilateral unison as
the glass castles of the State come crashing down

equal to each and every sister
brother to seven billion
rebel with a cause
now
tell me
will you join
your voice with ours
'cause trust me we need
all the help that we can get

the planet makes another pass
around its lonely star
an arbitrary point in space-time
delineated by a self-aggrandized
emperor stabbed to death by
those closest to him

et tu
brute

i spent the night
the sole attendee in a
dreary cinema
half-asleep
ignoring spasms
of guilt and envy
witnessing the depravity
to which the 1%
would sink to ensure
their profits never
decreased  

you were getting wasted
with strangers and
fair-weather friends
on cheap liquor and i can't
help but wonder if he's there

does he even ask to hold your hand

and i'll nurse
my jealousy
the way you'd
sip a lukewarm beer
it tastes foul but
no one wants to be
the only one at a
New Year's Eve party
who has to be
sober

some nights i imagine i am
the lone survivor of an ill-fated crew
the very last human being
in an apathetic galaxy
awakened from hypersleep
trapped aboard this
spaceship

this is not a dialogue.
tug the cotton
out of your ears.
free speech
is the banner
fascists wave
to propagate
their hate, hissing
with forked tongues,
spitting vitriolic venom.

speak in a language
they cannot fail
to comprehend:
kick a racist
in the teeth.
*******,
**** ****.
no pasaran!
they shall not pass.
we won't go meekly
into that dark night.

an intrepid inheritance
predicated on delusion
processing profuse refuse an
iconoclastic self-absorption suffusing
each and every molecule
we’re confusing consumption
with an inane ideology

as we choke the atmosphere with
CO2 and pump toxins into
our food will we pause as
the doomsday clock tick-tocks
closer to midnight
and the terror alert
goes code red
to consider that we
are at once
this planet’s cancer
and its cure

if Jesus is truly the
reason for the season
do you suppose he’d
impose on those
who do not
share your faith

for the love of Christ
let’s depose the overlords
the Nazarene opposed
hell
that’s something even
i could get behind

Mary
did you know
that your baby boy
was an anarchist who
practiced non-violence
and met death on a cross
as a terrorist rebelling
against the unjust

to those who deign to
name themselves Christians in
homage to the divine
why profane the memory
of a socialistic hippie who
bred an insurrection and
bled for the cessation
of human conflict
the negation of
self-serving intentions
disguised in capitalism

in the spirit of Christmas
defy the death drive
propelling us towards mass extinction
abandon corporate bookstores
protest in front of city hall
the kingdom of god is within you
so go home
kiss the ones you love for

“if we are not the word of god
then god never spoke”
it’s up to us to recognize
that we ourselves
are progenitors of the divine

we left early
couldn't've been half-past
6 o'clock in the morning
the dawn gray left dew-dripped
melancholy on the foggy front lawn
beyond your mother's portable home
we drove down I-4 singing Anberlin's "A
Day Late" and took the back route down
A1A to the secret place where

the waves whispered languid lullabies
as heat rays traced your skin and harmonized
with the ancient anthems of the Atlantic
as it hummed its gentle cadences

beams of light filtered through sandy
tresses on that solitary beach in the
middle of April
lens flares immortalizing sly grins in ways
i thought only celluloid could deliver
yet you were corporeal and immediate
a fragment of an inch from me

film clumped in loose spools around us
wasted shots used and then discarded
we lay on our sides
exchanging joy in silence
and mirth in sideward glances

barefoot along the boardwalk
beneath the shadows of mangroves
trespassing in the backyards of the bourgeoisie
feet kicking toes dipping minnows nibbling
in the brackish Indian River

J.B.'s Fish Camp was slow
that time of year
we gave manatees fresh water
watched the dolphins' distant dance as
i debated whether or not  
i should try to hold your hand

you drank lukewarm beer as our star
sank over your sunburnt shoulders
and a blues musician played
somber tunes of lust and loss that
carried us away as we ate coconut shrimp
and the breeze blew in from the bay

you wore a baseball cap with
the Atlanta Braves' crimson A and
sported a matching jersey of your
little league softball team and though i may
not quite remember every little thing you said i
can't shake the way you caught
my eye and blushed before turning your head

boats drifted past and
the sun tucked itself to sleep
and you made me promise
to let you read every ****** poem i'd ever
breathe into existence

you said you'd value them more than gold
prize them always cherish the memories
even when you grew older but
the sun had already set
its absence left a chill in my bones

the light above
the snowy keys
shines bright, almost
harsh

i can feel the
pain
in her voice
it’s as tangible as

the way her fingers
slightly
almost imperceptibly
tremble
once so confident
now painfully unsure

melodies used to be so
simple, beauty singing through
the strings of a
1940’s piano built of

wood
iron
and ivory

but now caustically
discordant harmonies
of harmonies
are catalyzed by
our recent brush with
ugly memory

i say, “Grandma” when
i see the tear drop to
the surface of
those pristine
yet grievous
keys

it balances there, precipitously, beside
her wedding ring
as she tells me, “i think
that’ll be all for today, my sweet.”

left to right,
all looks the same to me.
as far as the eye can see,
a cadre of thieves
waiting for their chance.
when our vigilance slips
they'll kick the chair beneath our feet
and leave us hanging
from the bows of a willow tree.

if ever there was a time
to smash windows, burn limos,
and punch Nazis, the moment is here.
you fancy yourself progressive
yet here you sit on your hands, regressing,
playing the hand you've been dealt.
did you forget the deck is stacked?
the House always wins.

it's time to flip the table over.

toss their rule-book in the gutter.
a clenched fist is not just an image
you stick on a protest sign
to appear edgy. the movement
for gender equality is not an opportunity
for you to get laid. fighting the State
is not a weekend getaway.
carve the reality into your thick skull:
people are dying.

don't you see? they want us divided.
we're easier prey that way.
if they demonize the anarchists
and socialists then they can make
the liberals feel safe. "don't be violent,"
they say. "comply. obey. and we'll mete out
just enough concessions to keep
your guilty conscience assuaged."

if we fail to hold their feet to the fire
they'll throw us in the ovens.
the fascists will drag us out
behind the chemical sheds,
pull a burlap sack over our heads,
and won't stop the firing squad
'till we're long dead.

will you sit idle and watch
them drag us away? or will you
get aggressive, stand up to the State
and say, "not today."
don't be a passive participant
in your own arrest. the human mind
is omnipotent, an emancipatory instrument.
we have to begin
imagining a world without gods and masters,
envisioning what it means to be truly free.
resist the corpulence of false democracy
and make the prefigurative dream
our new reality.

when i was seven
i asked my mother if all dogs went to heaven
because i wanted to be sure that
i’d see old Buddy up in the clouds
once he’d passed on

she told me that i would
she said in fact
all dogs do go to heaven
but my mother had a
penchant for canines
so i secretly wondered
whether or not that was true

then i asked her if my friend Adam would be there too
since he was Jewish and Jews aren’t allowed
to go to heaven

for this had left me so confused
how could god
let dogs into heaven
but abandon all
my friends

she told me in no uncertain terms that
there was only one way
one truth and
one life
and that one way
one truth
one life came through Christ

which was funny
considering Jesus
was Jewish too

you are an ancient oak tree
an old soul, silently standing vigil
over my balcony.
your branches shade me
as i ponder the intricacies
of the cosmos, limbs outstretched
in a complex web of leaves
embracing unanswered mysteries.

moonbeams peel back the branches to peer
down at you, white light dancing like phantoms
on your skin, desperate to heal
the bits of you cut  
and marred by calloused hands.
one day i'll kiss your scars like the moon
and feel the heat of your bark
pressing warm against my form.

your presence steals the toxins
from the air i inhale, steeling me,
harvesting CO2
and producing oxygen.
i want to breathe deep,
fill my lungs with your fragrance,
a heady high, lost
in an aura of hot pink.

as a chorus of crickets
deign to sing just for us—
the only audience still up
at half past 1:00
in the morning—
i treasure the way your mahogany irises
continually brighten when you look at me.
a symbiosis simultaneously saving both of us.

who holds the leash
of the pigs in the streets?  
follow the paper trail:
dead presidents
never fail to be the culprit.

it's not who
but what.
the police always
serve and protect
capital and property.
why else would they block
off a jewel store
during a peaceful rally?

they may not be
our enemy,
but they
certainly
aren't our friends.

they are the strong-arm
of the State,
fodder on a frontline
devised by fascist elite.
the boys in blue
with low IQs
are oligarchs' favorite tools
for bludgeoning
dissent and pummeling
free expression.
useful idiots—
truncheons designed
with punishing dissidents
in mind.

we may well be
the 99%, but they have badges,
guns, and a license to ****
emblazoned on the blue shield
slapped on their chests,
stoking overzealous
racists to respond violently,
a cacophony of bloodshed
seems to be the only language
they know how to speak.

smash the fraternity
that acquiesces to criminality.
white men in pressed suits—
who's speculative spending
lead to economic catastrophe—
get off scott-free
while black men are imprisoned
for possessing an ounce of ****.
not even the blind would fail to see
the "just us" system excludes
the majority of humanity.

all lives matter?
only ignorance could present
such a fictitious narrative,
a self-congratulatory hyperbole
disregarding contemporary reality.
private prisons designed for profit,
institutionalized bigotry instigating
a new form of slavery.
when mass incarceration
lacerates our communities
and exacerbates the conditions
of the working class,
the only dignified response
is to stand up, fight back.

we no longer
have a need
for this blatant idiocracy.
if we truly want to call this country
"the land of the free,"
then we must say,
loudly and clearly:
abolish the police.

the rocking chair creeks on the back porch.
she cradles The Hobbit in her lap,
sips black tea and brings the joint to her lips,
carried away in an airborne ship of smoke
to Middle-Earth, an escape
from the tedium of 9-to-5s,
consumerism and bored housewives.

the cars **** by but she can’t hear.
she slips through the fabric of time
and space to the upside down. flipped
around with another page to hang
on the precipice of bliss implicit
in every interlocking sentence.

here, words cannot hurt, only heal.
within these holy septs, sacred texts
lead us to truths beyond the veil.
she who reads
has lived a thousand lives
in a fraction of the time.

i want to dive behind her cold brew eyes
and peruse the passages of synaptic gaps,
meandering along neurological paths,
for not all who wander are lost.
the human mind is like your favorite book—
once it’s been opened,
it can never again be truly closed.

time is a flat circle
and we are trapped
upon its cyclical surface
the collapse of string
theory and quantum
physics marks the
dissolution of the
multiverse

as the dragon eats
his tail and
tall tales of
moral absolutes
disintegrate
we return eternally
cursed to relive
our worst mistakes
ad infinitum

Søren Kierkegaard
calls it infinite recession
trapped within an
ambivalent cosmos
constantly existing
at once everywhere
and nowhere
simultaneously present
within our most
blissful memories and
sinking in the abyss

doomed to repeat
our failures and endure
our fears over and
over again and again
etcetera

i wish i could put my fist
through this wretched city,
march straight down Monroe
to the capitol building—
that flaccid, *******, hideous tower
looming like the tomb of god
over Tallahassee.

this bastion of neoliberalism
sits in the heart of a red state.
escalating rent and gentrification
go hand-in-hand on occupied Muskogee lands.
statues commemorating genocidal colonizers
defended by neo-Confederate bootlickers
keep watch over Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd.
everywhere you look in this college town
you’ll find indigeneity reduced to a mascot.

so let’s introduce a little anarchy.
we’ll clash with riot cops
armed with tire-irons and Molotovs.
occupy the academy, transform the cafeteria
into a people’s kitchen. teach freely
on Landis Green. come, dance
with abandon and reclaim these tired streets
from those beset on our alienation.

it's an age-old quandary
posed in introductory
classes on physics and philosophy
pray tell
what happens when
an unstoppable force
meets an immovable object

at first
such inquiries struck me as
existential exercises on the
paradoxical nature of language
and the circumstantial limits
of our reality which i found
to be little more than petty frivolities
after all
this existence is comprised of
nothing less and nothing more
than subjective perceptions catalyzed
by our own eyes and

while i've since come to realize that
there are no black and white solutions
only grade shades that obfuscate
manichean and simplistic versions
of the truth
i must admit
i think i've found an answer
to this question that might
just be foolproof

because i've already met an unstoppable force
it's personified in her twin twilight eyes
that rotate like intertwined galaxies
in a nocturnal dance of evanescent starlight
manifest in the mischief that burns
as white-hot and bright as hydrogen fusion
every time she smirks at me

and if she epitomizes the
extravagant intensity of a
runaway train that refuses to be stopped
or a knockout punch that cannot be blocked
then i myself am her counterpart
an immovable object
solemn and sober at a standstill
withstanding an onslaught of elemental
cacophanies that shake this very
planet to its molten iron core

still i remain the silent sentinel
a giving tree
ancient
ageless
vigilantly awaiting her impending earthquake
which will shake and shatter this forest
of fools and frauds about me who reach
outstretched limbs like thieves and liars
she is a hurricane uprooting craven mentalities
and when all the barren woodchips are
spread about the vicinity i shall stand strong
on the mountain peak with those alliterative words
carved into my wooden feet

i'm "bent
but not broken
hanging on by a thread"
and while we might invent
a trillion reasons to steel
our resolve and refuse this
addiction once and for all
i can think of one monosyllabic
four-letter word that gives us
an excuse to do just the opposite
one that is as rare as it as pure
at once precious and effervescent
it is the cousin of faith and hope
but greater still and it gives us a
reason to fight when we cannot seem
to cope with a world tightening
nooses of rope around our throats

so kick the chair
my neck won't snap
and when they come to cut me
down they'll ask me
"after all this time"
i will conjure my
patronus in your image
as the word "always"
anoints on my lips like your kiss

like evolution or the Big Bang
this eternal question must have
an answer buried deep
waiting to be unearthed
and it begins
as always
with a simple hypothesis

were we to meet again beneath
the moonlight the way we did
three hundred and sixty-five days ago
on a rooftop in a distant neighborhood
i wager it would be a bad idea
dangerous and reckless
but our affection would become unbreakable
as we coalesced in ethereal bliss

so
while i do not yet know
what happens when an unstoppable force
crashes into an immovable object
try asking me again tomorrow
so i have time to conduct
some experiments
and i just might have
a more scientific answer

but
then again
it is only a
hypothesis