Men of Reason: bold, progressive
hammer wielders, depth resounders –
shout from the helm your Godless missive
as our Bible-lifeboat flounders.

Send that Flying Spaghetti Monster,
our imaginary friend,
to the myth-conception dumpster:
let the Bronze Age folktales end.

Make the idols bow to Science.
Your progressive task: to mock –
seek that end in brave defiance.
Down with the shepherd’s useless flock !

Laser-focused human reason
serves to clarify the matter,
strips the symbols from the season,
superstitious tales to shatter.

We, mere rubes in need of crutches,
simple children, willing tools –
must be rescued from the clutches
of the fables preached to fools.

Seamless garments, bushes burning:
are but schemes for fleecing sheep…
We are plebes devoid of learning;
rouse our silly souls from sleep!

Flood us with your noontide wisdom
decimate the weaker link.
Blow away our card-house kingdom
show us Christards how to think.

Then, like you, we shall no longer
cling to ignorance and lies.
Missing links make chains yet stronger,
dragging fairies from the skies.

We shall join you in assurance
that there is no great beyond
thus no need for fire insurance
clergy, staff or magic wand.

We shall celebrate together
joyful, freed from superstition
endless, godless sunny weather:
non-existent non-perdition.

Having thus improved the light
and magnified Man’s modern day,
God’s angels will expire in fright;
the Lord shall meekly fade away.

Every generation
has the leaders and the followers.
The popular kids and the geeks,
the kids who get high on the streets
and the kids who get high on cloud nine.
The artists and the poets,
the skaters, the stoners,
the musicians and the actors,
and we all have the kids
who are all of the above.
We all have the kids
who are none of the above.
Times change, yes
and trends come and go
but don’t tell me that I’m exceptional
not because of what I know
but because of the children
that surround me.
Don’t tell me to speak my dreams
and release my strife in the form of rhyme
because “few others you know do it”.
Passion is limitless,
passion is ageless
and while I’m being raised
in a generation of technology
and dramatic social media,
yolo and swag, pregnant teens
and 55-hour marriages-
I’m growing up
in a generation of artists,
a generation of dreamers,
a generation of doers,
and a generation
of freethinkers.
Freethinkers whose words
drip from their tongues like honey
and stain their pages in the world
like wine.
Students who get bored
with teachers wanting them to think
in 1’s and 0’s,
fit into standards,
speak in slanders
and begin to hyperventilate
because they can’t translate
what they think.
Kids who haven’t forgotten
that breathing in binary isn’t healthy.
Apparently, those that find
enough creative destruction in life to cheat the system
are going against the greater public’s
better judgement,
feeling free to sit and glare
at those who swear that they’re normal,
but I’m not growing up with those kids.
People who sit back and cry crocodile tears
for those who don’t know
what to think of themselves,
sitting back and laughing
at those who shudder and shake
at the thought of being caught in between
different sides of their minds
that they don’t know it’s okay to have…
but I’m not growing up with those people.
I’m growing up in a
group of rebels,
a group that will one day
run the nation-
a nation of tenacious activists,
wearing their minds
more professionally than
politicians wear their suits-
and with better ideas.
Because we have voices,
we have pens,
but most important
we have ideas,
ideas that can change the world,
change the world more
than poker-faced suits
and hate commercials
and picket signs
ever could.

Autistically
speaking
I applaud
your intelligence!

flap flap
clap clap

when you
don't think
before
you think

flap flap
clap clap

or open your
*******
******* mouth!

and disparage
and belittle
those with

a learning
disability.

But then maybe
It's you who is
disabled
as you don't
seem able to
distinguish
between what
is right and wrong
what is cruel and kind

flap flap
clap clap

in your ignorance
you are blind
and your
intellectual mind
is a snob
of the worse kind

Looking down
from your high brow
because you
are so clever

I forget
Let's all applaud
and you can remark
(Out of context of course)
that they're all ******* retards

flap flap
clap clap

Well aren't you hard!
You bully when
you say

the dimwits
and the morons,
unloveable,
undateable,
unwanted,
a drain of society
they should all be
put down.

Not somebody
you would choose
to be friends with
or if you did
it would be so you
take advantage of
an idiots good nature
and pure heart!

flap flap
clap clap

Or so you
could look good
in comparison
to them
and maybe it
would knock your
own IQ up
a number or two!

Your average ******
could teach you a
thing about numbers
if you asked them

And you wouldn't want
your own kids
playing
with them
incase they catch it....

Catch what?....
the ability to be
awesome
to think outside
the box
to see feel and
understand
and experience
the world and
people in a
completely
unheard of way.
To smell colours
and taste words,
and your inability
to deviate from
anything other
than your narrow
little mind
really is absurd!

So let's all clap
and flap flap
flap flap flap
and maybe
shriek a bit too!

They are the true
freethinkers
the true misfits
the pure and
the truly blessed

They are
the ones
the people
who are
"different"
"Individual"
as you
would like
to be

flap flap
clap clap
You ignorant ****!

Autistically speaking

Who's the ****** now?



©Jacqui Slade

For example: the frogs
find a dinner plate, and an acorn
makes funny gestures from beneath the dirt.
And the string twangs, as was expected.

How simple, how unlikely to happen to us.
Only a misplaced vector connects
the pine tree’s yowl to the sandbox,
which, if you don’t think about it, is alright.

I get confused so many times
before I stop and train my thoughts.
And again: the sound I hear
is either walnuts cracking or red birds

splashing into windows. But
the movements have been extinguished
and the two are so dissimilar they may as well
be the same. Or watermelons

stomping insects underfoot. In
the other room of this house is a man
walloping a rooster with a broom,
but the rooster is too scared

to tell him just how effective
positive thinking is, just as oceans
are too murky to provide freethinkers
with a useful metaphor.

Of course not, said a man
lifting his cat from pool. But then
it was too late, and something
was pulling whimpers through the air.

My life has been molded
by the world of 15 minute increment agendas
and 150 character updates by the second.

My body has been pacified
by the world of liquid sugar satiation
and instant edible gratification.

My mind has been conditioned
by the world that favors extroverted personalities
and introverted abdomens and collarbones.

I live, move and breathe
in the world that is scared of freethinkers
and will not succeed in boxing me in.

In my world, I define my own worth.

Hope thrown on the still steaming ashes of the old empire fusing with the hearts of freethinkers and go getters burning beneath the chest of women and man turning young people into dragons with amber colored eyes and wings that stretch a mile high

Reaching above the blinding smoke of broken industry grabbing at the setting sun with still ****** claws

Will they burn out never to know why the heavens glow, or maybe this is just the beginning the match that lights the torch

The wild fire that consumes cleansing and purifying to bring on a new life maybe not for me or you, more likely for the ones long after

Leaving only remnants of the ones who dared to become dragons to be remembered as a roaring flame whose dreams where embers with veins like gasoline filled rivers running just beneath the skin ready to be pierced ready to burst and ignite.

yeah cops are just working guys doing a ***** job
and when you need one you NEED one
but man, they let themselves be molded into an army
at the drop of a top hat and overtime paycheck
the police are weapons and sometimes used accordingly
they see no problem dropping into invasion mode
against the unemployed, the underemployed
the darker population, freethinkers
and other americans who break no laws
except the law against resisting the harness
the cops accept their role as cattle **** to students
who are playing THEIR role:  cross-examining the USA
it's simple but true--
wear a suit and you're the boss
dress funky and you're a creep.
deserving of the smug baton
i observed this at the G20 summit
where i strolled along a phalanx of cops
there to protect the inviolability of property
more sacrosanct than the citizens of the country
and now i watch them kick down the wallstreet settlements
serving and protecting the dollar almighty
(thanks to my fellow beatniks for the cliche last line)
(but tell me it’s not true)
if you’re a policeman reading this
thanks for getting my keys out of the car
but WAKE UP to the way you’re intermittently implemented

As the war ended, the world charter ratified,
Mass confusion abound, those who lived, those who died.
The Trümmerfrau organize, tons of rubble in their way;
Captors held by captives receive penance, war time ballet;
The fourth *****,  just an embryo, now in barren lands,
Regurgitated lost ideals, lost ways, their lost plans;
And while Nuremburg defined the reality of genocide,
The atomic age was born and we continued to divide.

We’ve nowhere to hide.

“You cannot fight evil with evil”
With grace and serenity, she softly spoke,
“Our past was not well thought-out –
We allowed crude hate to convoke
And seep on through, an attempt to replicate
All that’s wrong in our lives, all the damage and hate
That tries to consume love’s yearning for light –
Instead of an out-held hand and a pathway from the plight.”

And as freethinkers disappear, David Kelly for one,
We look back and see all we’ve done is still undone.