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Lawrence Hall Feb 2019
The cultural filters are all in place
And truth, some say, is past its sell-by date
Weak hymns embalmed by hippies, and lost in space
Where time is always 1968

A poison-green tattoo on a fleshy back
No incense, but the Purell’s pretty strong
A ten-year-old gobbles his comfort snack
During Communion and a three-chord song

Our bishops quack and honk in flocks and herds -
We need a starets
                                           but all we get are words:


Intensify the Dallas Charter accountability focus accountability exclusively accountability collegial collective accountability responsibility address theme encounter dialectic collegiality variety universality unity flock dealing topic difficult reasons unexplored differences crisis difficult for bishops enable abusers gravely irreparably failures governance responsibility question engage conversation point brother problematic behavior cultivate culture correctio fraterna enables offending other recognize criticism opportunity to tasks related willingness personally mistakes to each other feeling maintain fraternal relationship cases we damaging weakness anecdotal parenthesis to his speech encounters course ministry recollection forgive counseling for healing discussing matter rationally headway realized psyche of the person measure semblance justice inability forgive his  apparently perplexing consternating remarked noting changed personality of person realize humility mistakes learn mistakes better question unanswered unaddressed mistakes allowed consequences mishandling cases gathering conferences participants and journalists effective concrete measures combat scourge scandal technical theological sense term list reflection points adjunct secretary special portfolio combatting meeting chief architects roadmap for our discussion very, very concrete understatement seriously utter understatement things discussed follow-up meeting continued model of reform the so-called intensify the Dallas Charter metropolitan model metropolitan investigating disciplining wayward ecclesiastical provinces briefing responded you have to read the footnote disgrace investigations systemic coverup dismissed briefing expressed hope report position power prominence leadership structure report findings influence broader jurisdictions Accountability focus accountability exclusively accountability collegial collective accountability responsibility address theme encounter dialectic collegiality variety universality unity flock dealing topic difficult reasons unexplored differences crisis difficult for bishops enable abusers gravely irreparably failures governance responsibility question engage conversation point brother problematic behavior cultivate culture correctio fraterna enables offending other recognize criticism opportunity to tasks related willingness personally mistakes to each other feeling maintain fraternal relationship cases we damaging weakness anecdotal parenthesis to his speech encounters course ministry recollection forgive counseling for healing discussing matter rationally headway realized psyche of the person measure semblance justice inability forgive his  apparently perplexing consternating remarked noting changed personality of person realize humility mistakes learn mistakes better question unanswered unaddressed mistakes allowed consequences mishandling cases gathering conferences participants and journalists effective concrete measures combat scourge scandal technical theological sense term list reflection points adjunct secretary special portfolio combatting meeting chief architects roadmap for our discussion very, very concrete understatement seriously utter understatement things discussed follow-up meeting continued model of reform the so-called Metropolitan model metropolitan investigating disciplining wayward ecclesiastical provinces briefing responded you have to read the footnote disgrace investigations systemic coverup dismissed briefing expressed hope report position power prominence leadership structure report findings influence broader jurisdictions accountable faithful promises episodes  accountability supportive talking collegiality obligation misbehavior failures circumstances reputation representative discreet inquiries interview expression concern geographically confronted reported matter subject investigating disciplining malfeasance proposal wrongdoing explained carefully considered matter alternatives remarks paragraph  rehearsed alternatives footnote 6 of text speeches delivered sessions briefing spoke involvement laity lay involvement transparency transparent offending other recognize criticism opportunity to tasks related willingness personally mistakes to each other feeling maintain fraternal relationship cases we damaging weakness anecdotal parenthesis to his speech encounters course ministry recollection forgive counseling for healing discussing matter rationally headway realized psyche of the person measure semblance justice inability forgive his  apparently perplexing consternating remarked noting changed personality of person realize humility mistakes learn mistakes better question unanswered unaddressed mistakes allowed consequences mishandling cases gathering conferences participants and journalists effective concrete measures combat scourge scandal technical theological sense term list reflection points adjunct secretary special portfolio combatting meeting chief architects roadmap for our discussion very, very concrete understatement seriously utter understatement things discussed follow-up meeting continued model of reform the so-called Metropolitan model metropolitan investigating disciplining wayward ecclesiastical provinces briefing responded you have to read the footnote disgrace investigations systemic coverup dismissed briefing expressed hope report position power prominence leadership structure report findings influence broader jurisdictions accountable faithful promises episodes  accountability supportive talking collegiality obligation misbehavior failures circumstances reputation representative discreet inquiries interview expression concern geographically confronted reported matter subject investigating disciplining malfeasance proposal wrongdoing explained carefully considered matter alternatives remarks paragraph  rehearsed alternatives footnote 6 of text speeches delivered sessions briefing spoke involvement laity lay involvement transparency transparent intensify the Dallas Charter…
Your ‘umble scrivener’s site is:
Reactionarydrivel.blogspot.com.
It’s not at all reactionary, tho’ it might be drivel.

Lawrence Hall’s vanity publications are available on amazon.com as Kindle and on bits of dead tree:  The Road to Magdalena, Paleo-Hippies at Work and Play, Lady with a Dead Turtle, Don’t Forget Your Shoes and Grapes, Coffee and a Dead Alligator to Go, and Dispatches from the Colonial Office.
Big Virge Jan 2020
Ya Know ...
The System REALLY Is A LOT of Things ... !!!

A ... " House of Cards " ...
That Are ... CLEARLY MARKED ... !!!

Because Systemic FARCE ...
Seems To Be UNIVERSAL In This World of Ours ... !!?!!

I've Now Seen HOW ...
Systemic MALFUNCTION Is Linked To CORRUPTION ... !!!
From Those Who Use ... TRUNCHEON ...
To Meat That's Called ... LUNCHEON ...

NEITHER Seem To Be STRUCTURED ...
To Do More Than ... PUNCTURE ...
And RUPTURE Heart Function ... !!!!!

SYSTEMIC Instruction ...
Is USED Like ... BLOOD SUCTION ... !?!

VAMPIRIC Breeds Whose Systemic NEEDS ...
FFED OFF The People So Do EMBRACE EVIL ... !!!

LEECHES With Speeches ...
Whose Words Seem To Deal In ...
HYPOCRISY ... CONSTANTLY ... !?!

Their Philosophies ... HONESTLY ...
NEED A .... " COLOSTOMY " .... !!!!!!!!!!!

Because **** Retention Seems To Be The Direction ...
Systemic INFECTIONS ... Are CURRENTLY Heading ... !!!!!!!

Talk That Is FARCE That They CLAIM To Be SMART ...
KICKS **** Like An *** Who's NOT Had Some Grass ...
To CALM DOWN Their MOOD So DOESN'T Move Cool ... !!!

The System Is SCHOOLED ...
In Breeding NEW FOOLS ... !!!

Bernie Mac' Said it BEST ... !!!

IGNORANT Heads Are Now WALKING DEAD ... !!!
But YET Somehow EXPECT To Get Some RESPECT ...
From A System HELL BENT On Leaving Them SPENT ...
With NO FORCE To Use When The System Makes Moves ...

To Give Them ... HARD LABOUR ...
WITHOUT A ....... " Light Sabre " ......... !!!?!!!

Entertainment TOO ...
Systemically ... " Prunes " ...
The TRUTH To POLLUTE ...
The Minds of Our YOUTH And Some Elders Too ... !!!

From Music To Film The System is CHILLED ...
When It Comes To ... EXPOSURE ...
of Art That Is POTENT Like Cancer To Smokers ... !!!

They Deal In ... " DISCLOSURE " ...
But Somehow These P.O.T.U.S. DON'T Seem To Serve NOTICE ...

They Just Deal In ... " QUOTAS " ...
Like ... " Roger Moore Lotus " ... !!!

SPIES Who DENY The Masses GOOD Lives ... !!!
Because THEY FLY HIGH While Poor Folks Survive ... !!!!

The System ... DOES LIE ...
I Think You Will ... FIND ... !!!
And Turns A ... "BLIND EYE" ...

To Those Who They Ply ...
With Trades FIT For SLAVES ... !!!
Who NOW ... DON'T Wear Chains ... !!!

So ... LOOK At Your Life ...
Does The System SUPPLY ...
YOU With The Freedoms ...
of Those With ... SILK Ties ... ?!!!?

CORPORATE Types ...
Whose SLAVERY Lies ...
In MONEY Plantations ... !!!

Do You Get What I'm SAYING ... !?!

Now I'm NO Anarchist ... !!!
But The System NOW IS ...
BROKE With NO FIX ... ?!?

NEW AGE Genesis ...

Gay Couples Raise Kids As Transgenders WIN ...
Awards And APPLAUSE For Being ... REAL WOMEN ... ?!?

Errrrrr ... Something NEEDS FIXING ... !!!

So Now It Seems WOMEN ...
Face ... Systemic TRIMMING ... !?!

When Men Can Make CLAIMS ...
To Plaudits And Fame And EVEN ACCEPTANCE ...
Because They CHANGE Names And Dress Like A Dame ... !?!

I HOPE FEMINISTS  ARE Looking At ... THIS ... !!!
Instead of COMPLAINING About CHAUVINISTS ...

The System ENLISTS ... CONFUSION To SPLIT ...
GOOD SENSE From ................... LOGIC ...
If It FILLS The Pockets of GREED Driven LIARS ...
Who Are NOT ... " Good Friars " ... !!!!!

They're MORE LIKE Deniers of TRUTH And RIGHTS ...
UNLESS They're INDULGENT In What Is REPUGNANT ...
To Minds NOW Resigned To ... "FALLING IN LINE" ... !!!!!!!
Because They DON'T Want To Be .................. OSTRACIZED ... !!!

For THINKING And SPEAKING ...
In Ways NOT CONFINED .............................................

Because of The FEAR of ... SYSTEMIC Ears ...
CLAIMING Their Statements To Be ... " ANTIQUATED " ... !!!!!!
These People Are FATED To FIND Themselves BATED ...
Like WORMS On A Line Because They're Inclined ...

... To BLEAT Just Like SHEEP ... !!!!

When SYSTEMIC Sheepdogs Do MORE Than Just Creep ... !!!
It Seems That These Peeps' Are ... Mentally WEAK ... !!!

And ONE DAY Will SEE That FREEDOM of SPEECH ...
Should ALWAYS Run FREE .........................................................

And NOT Be ... "IMPRISONED"
Cos' ... "System RESTRICTIONS" ...
May ONE DAY Well REACH ...
A Time Where Our LEADERS ...

CANNOT Be ... " IMPEACHED " ... !!!

From Racists To Sexists To MONEY Indexes ...
And NOW YES It Seems To ... ****** COMPLEXES ... !?!

It's CLEAR That ...  " The System " ...
Stems From FLAWED beginnings ... !!!!!

So THINK What You WILL ...
But THINK About ... THIS ... !!!

When You CHECK How We Live ...
What Do You Now Think ... ?

... " The System Really Is ?!? " ...
Listen Here :

https://soundcloud.com/user-16569179/the-system-really-is
Julian Jun 2018
The ******* of embezzled glory staunchly defend their counterfeit stature by defalcating the public trust of industrious societies governed internally by compunction and sabotaged externally by the tempests of acerbic fate met with inclement aleatory convergence. To supply a society with ingenuity without being complaisant or officious with unctuous pleas to the overlords we must fashion a new vogue that taps the bustle of giants and aggrandizes the margins to oversee their own creative destinies with scaffolded arrangements of titanic promise and justifiable fluidity to conquer the blinkered dogmatism of a dissolute chastity to inveterate apocryphal tenets of factitious but unmerited perspectives. Democracy crumbles when the convenience of sensationalism supplants the resolve of those that fossick hidden wealth and promulgate validity instead of undergirding pomp with precarious prevarications of duplicitous omission guarded gingerly by the gatekeepers of a ****** sanity that whitewashes the discussion with invented hobgoblins and purblind catharsis. To defeat simplicity and enshrine byzantine elegance as the paragon for voguish commentary rather than abide by a bowdlerized decorum for appeasing simpletons with divisive balkanization through identity politics we can overcome the impediments to human progress that are engineered to persist because of the inertia of the listless and the stubbornness of doctrinaire politicization and invent vivacity and festivity anew. We need to divorce ourselves from pedestrian quibbles of hero-worship that endanger the vitality of the common discourse because of fastidious pedantic disempowerment that ravages us with debased dreams by underscoring nuisances and tolerable nightmares that emasculate the virulence of the liberated individual and subvert his ambitions to contend with a picaresque world of limitless promise and self-motivated internal wealth.
      The bane of modernity is how chary the world becomes because of fractured histories intersecting with controversial destinies and the antidote to that poisonous self-defeating self-censorship is the audacity of brazen challenges to expurgation through assiduous resourcefulness and delicate diplomacy in wrangling controversies with outspoken courage rather than whispered resentment. Temerity waged in inclement circumstance is justified and curiosity stoked by lambent flames of fulgurant individualism should be fortified to the extent necessary to conquer the feckless spoilsports of unctuous puritanism and institutional obedience. The quacksalvers that blather about inconsequence strand the imagination in a desiccated desert that is ostracized from the palettes of the artistic whim to wield efflorescence rather than squander life in pursuit of perfunctory lucre or tenuous solidarity around banal idealism promised by social justice warriors that forget the biggest war being waged on humanity is on the ingenuity of the common discourse and the liberty to opine about real issues rather than saccharine conventions of emasculation through linguistic imprisonment and epicurean slavery to fashimites who relish the buzzword but never the enlightened audience that scoffs at feeble attempts at cultural commentary like Childish Gambino’s “This is America” music video. This particular artifact is a demonstration of how childishly fickle the plebeian mentality really is, stitching together a bricolage of violence to engineer controversy and serenading it with the most banal music imaginable and exhorting people to herald it as a high artform while inundating the world with unimaginative comic book movies and Star Wars rip-offs because of the lucrative business of formulaic replication. “This is America” should be regarded as a parody of itself because of how hackneyed its design is and how cacophonous it sounds and mocks its audience with lowbrow tactics of adding tinsel to trash and marketing it as the glory of tatterdemalions rather than the refinement of true cinematic achievements that have been relegated because Warhol’s Campbells-Soup-consumerism trumps true belletrist in the public view.
        Cultural watersheds punctuate our history with salient achievements in experimentation, but the formulaic profiteering of buzzword sensationalism and yellow journalism and the ostentatious glorification of promiscuous boasting and fancy cars tantalize the mice to continue playing slot machines rather than penning a novel or doing something promethean. The world scoffs at Trump but ignores the bigger institutional caveats that endanger us much more than a pragmatic albeit unconventional pontificator who is complicit in constructing a false narrative to enslave mindless people to fret about eminence rather than delight themselves in the consequential nuances of established refinement that used to serenade the world with flourish and spectacle. The world kowtows to the crusade against flavor-of-the-week enemies of the liberal-conservative syncretism because it has been conditioned to believe that synthesis is the only logical solution for the polarized worldviews of churlish people that become parvenus not on their merits but on their marketable pitfalls and their public foibles. Peccadillos are more important to people than virtues and this makes society morally bankrupt if we loiter around Astroturf causes that have been infiltrated by corporatism and venal debauchery and acquiesce as disempowered gossip hounds that hunt in packs to find jest in aberration rather than achievement in self-created narratives that defy the stupid purblind boorishness of the mainstream media and its haughty liberalism or the persnickety condemnation of priggish conservative moralities that had an expiration date 50 years ago. Who the **** cares about transgender-touting-gender-fluidity quidnuncs and the snooty obsession with lurid personal endeavors of reputable people that made minor ****** transgressions in a world policed by wide-eyed feminazis that seek to ransack men of their vital virulence to spotlight their unjustifiable oppression. Women are oppressed but the carnal nature of their calumniation and their vindictive powers of persuasion are deployed with such vehement vigilance and such distaste for the majority that the world relegates itself to quibbles of celebrities rather than substantive issues. There is a systemic feminization of society occurring that seeks to demarcate despotic uxorious pleasantries as an incarceration of vocal dissent against supercilious women and their tamed men that slavishly grovel in repudiation of anything prickly.  Men historically have oppressed women but the solution to this quandary isn’t a reverse discrimination where the minority concern is spotlighted as a majoritarian issue that overshadows the disproportionate nature of our society where nominal accreditation is afforded in a non-meritocratic way to absolve people of their carnality and demote the vigorous defense of human liberty as secondary to compromise solutions that appease more people than they offend but simultaneously result in suboptimal conditions that reward arbitrarily coachable people while jettisoning anyone witty enough to be capable of insubordination of a hedonistic epicurean world obsessed with appearance and ravaged by the decadence of formulaic profiteering at the expense of originality and true promethean art that is herculean enough to defy hackneyed tropes and siphon the best elements from a piecemeal world variegated with complexity but stifled by fomented hatred.
The solutions to these problems is to create a watchdog group of artistic critics who become eminent and ubiquitously heard enough to offer creative consultation to the artistic endeavors that we consume and the music that is curated for fastidious ears that crave euphonic originality rather than the banality of easily dovetailed bass-heavy cookie-cutter garbage and the gaudy tactics of talentless rappers whose swagger derives from  the intersection of opportunism and the divestiture of an industry that rewards gloated supercilious epicureanism and meretricious marketability. Am I the only one jaded by second-rate superhero movies that infest the cinemas that borrow from Michael Bay while thrusting pulse-pounding but narratively bankrupt movies down the throats of consumers that might prize the cinematic originality of the heyday of filmmaking? Is it always high art to invent controversy that is witless or half-witted just because it will create buzz? Shouldn’t we condemn the laziness of society in acquiescing to the penury of the modern cultural narrative which belabors the dead horses of racism and sexism ad nauseum? Shouldn’t we fight the war of against inequity through legislation rather than hibernating about scandalous eminence and testy malfeasance?
          Liberty should be championed above all else and we are turning our backs on the future unless we muster the resolve to diminish the sway of the common narrative and aim our spotlight at consequential endeavors rather than the tropes of prosaic and pedestrian bastardization of art and culture. We need to fight artistic laziness which has ravaged our culture and castigate the tactics of wannabee celebrities that use lurid tactics to attract an audience by bedizening themselves with Pyrrhic ostentations and rampant fakery to create more melodrama in a world that needs to be less histrionic. YouTube celebrities swarm us as they get high on ******* and lean-- at our expense-- and vandalize property and convincing nine-year-old’s like Lil Tay to flex her money like it is infinitely renewable in a finite world where all our attention is wasted on artless artifice of less talented people that know how to engineer a ruckus by strutting themselves beyond all decency and selling out to a corporatist nightmare of enslaved convenience. We need to be more vocal about the dissolution of artistic merit and the formulaic repetition of successful formulas that jade us and make us yawn about another retread of a previously successful idea that is milked to the point of cruelty.                                                         ­                       
       Let’s change the narrative and focus on creating true art rather than reacting to the meretricious tinsel of the vogue consensus which is so impotent in its ability to rivet audiences because it has become so notoriously lazy. Fight laziness in art, dismiss your news feeds, be resourceful, seek true happiness rather than find yourself hoodwinked and duped by the idea that Trump is the most important issue or getting caught in thought loops and brooding about sexism and inequality. Let us strive to be egalitarian but within limits that would also appease hominists rather than just the hypertrophy of the leftist narrative that seeks to cage us with the doublespeak of complaisant conformity.  Reject the unctuous charlatans that pretend priggishness when their banausic purpose is barbaric but beguiling to be a lullaby for laggards. We need to fight for the future of civilization rather than hobnob with convenience and loiter around decrying false perpetrators rather than systemic injustices that could otherwise be rectified if enough people fought for it. We can invent a future that is a great festivity serenaded by cultivated artistic refinement and forget about the trifles that divide us. United in ambition and fueled by ingenuity we can defeat artistic laziness and be resourceful with how we decide what is newsworthy. Spurred by the argosy of proactive motivation we can change the world in a substantial way by deciphering the subtext that governs the world. The subtext is everything!
Cedric McClester Apr 2021
By: Cedric McClester

Systemic racism
Doesn’t exist
Senator Lindsey Graham
Would probably insist
But that doesn’t mean
That he’s not remiss
See this is why they say
Ignorance is bliss

Systemic racism deniers
Point to the gains
That some blacks have made
Which has loosen their chains
But that notwithstanding
The fact still remains
Systemic racism exits
Despite their refrains

Systemic racism
Is a salient fact
Look at the rights  
They wanna take back
Like the right to vote
Which is anti-black
In spite of us having
A Voting Rights Act

Systemic racism
Is insidious
And it is worthy
Of our mutual disgust
See it not only harms
Just some of us
Though it’s mostly blacks
Who put up a fiuss












































Cedric McClester, Copyright © 2021.  All rights reserved.
Tammy M Darby Jul 2013
On the molded plastic black keys
Tip- tap tipping away  
Smiling wickedly
With self-satisfaction
Words deliberately in a sociopathic array

Crazed Eyes agleam
Thoughts rambling across the planets
In and out of reality
Both far and away

Each letter vibrates with its own life
The deranged wordsmith's release
So the clicking and typing
Systemic vacant sounds
Never seem to cease

To the mad poet
The combinations of descriptive words
Overpowering
Promotes the disease
Hypnotizing
Beguiling
Calling in a sweet voice
To the mad poet
In letters A to Z


This poem is copyrighted and stored in author base. All material subject to Copyright Infringement laws
Section 512(c)(3) of the U.S. Copyright
Act, 17 U.S.C. S512(c)(3),

Tammy M Darby
Akemi  Apr 2017
Kill Yourself
Akemi Apr 2017
Barbiturate is one of the few drugs capable of killing you painlessly, so of course the state has banned it. Instead we get paracetamol, a ****** over-the-counter painkiller that leaves you in pain for up to five days while your liver and kidneys shut down. Suicide prevention is a ******* joke. Secular appropriations of Christian values that assume life is worthwhile, whether you desire it or not. It’s long been known that rates of suicide rose dramatically with the birth of modernity—techno-scientific paradise for the middle-class which stresses efficiency over existence. New forms of automation, the human body disciplined into repetitious acts, the partitioning of workspaces so that no single worker could operate the whole—so that any worker could be fired and replaced with the minimum amount of training necessary for capital to continue circulating. The body is individualised, scrutinised, and punished by rich kids playing panopticon, so that any mass agitation is coerced into silence through the threat of destitution.

Slitting your wrists barely succeeds and more likely than not leaves you with tendon and muscle damage. Catalytic converters in cars now convert carbon monoxide into harmless CO2 and H2O. Drowning is one of the most painful ways to die. You cannot escape. The state places helpline numbers around suicide spots to treat life after the fact, rather than at the source of suffering. Vocal band-aids, ****** ******* aphorisms that seek to revert you back into a happy state-serving commodity. Things will get better. Life is worth living. Think positive. Alienation is omnipresent. Neoliberal discourse requires you to be subservient to the greater system of capital and the easiest way towards this is the instilment of comfort, of pleasant nullity, the circumscription of emotional capacity and reflectivity. Suicidal thoughts are abnormal, because life is worth living. Eat your packaged food item and watch Netflix.

For a drop into water to be fatal, it has to be 250 feet. Try to aim for your head to maximise brain injury. The most prominent suicide spot around here has a drop of 100 feet. They cordoned it off anyway. Your life doesn’t belong to you. The first time I tried to suicide my mother asked ‘why would you do that?’ as if it was the dumbest thing in the world. The second time, the doctor looked at me in an exasperated manner and prescribed me lots of drugs. Geettt bettterrrr. Nobody cares about you, they simply want you to return to normal. Normality as in serving your parents, serving your friends, serving the state, and serving the market. Normality as in not questioning social norms and institutions. Normality as in get a stable job (i.e. compete against other workers in an exploitative, undemocratic system that values and inculcates self-serving desires), get married (preferably to someone of the opposite *** who is middle-class and imbibes European culture), get pregnant/get someone pregnant (but only once or twice, because anyone who has more children than that is backwards), invest in housing (those students and lower-class families need to learn how the world works; really, it’s a benefit to take their money), watch sports (to instil national pride in your children; no son, we didn’t colonise the Pacific Islands, keep watching the man with the wooden stick hit *****), eat out every week (preferably exotic restaurants), go see the world (preferably exotic locations, so you can be served by exotic people, take in exotic sights, then leave without considering where any of your money has gone to, whether any of it has reached the slums, whether the beach you lay on is accessible to the people living there, or whether it has been privatised by the tourist firm so that only rich tourists like yourself can lie on it), join a club (those capitalists were innocent, it was the indigenous folk that were making a ruckus over the new golf course; it’s not like we’ve been colonising their land and culture for the past three centuries), donate to charity (but never any charity desiring systemic change; that’s crazy), consume, always consume (keeps the economy going; why question the desire for infinite growth in a world with limited land, resources and markets?), replace your phone every year (those poor workers in Asia need our help), repeat to the point of nausea.

The most successful method to suicide is a shotgun to the head; high calibre, slug rounds. Of course, with all these methods, the chance of failing may leave you disfigured, paralysed, mentally disabled or physically crippled (spinal damage, broken limbs, failed organs), with no guarantee that your family, or even your state, will allow for euthanasia. After all, the popular discourse paints suicide as selfish—an irony, considering liberalism places the self first and society second. It is viewed as sinful regardless of context—deontologically detached from anomie, alienation, material deprivation, social pressures, psychological affectations, any cause or structure. Life is worth living. This ignores that the subject is situated in existence. The subject moves through existence to live. Life, then, is the totality of the subject’s interactions. It cannot be universalised into a single state or judgement that merges all subjectivities into a catch-all worthiness. Worth is dependent of the subject.

I don’t know why I’m writing this. Maybe I just want everyone to **** themselves, because the world is ****** and the majority of people are ******* it worse. Most people think being nice makes them good. They turn blind to the systems of oppression they partake in. A while ago my mother was asking if I’d heard about the mass suicides happening at Foxconn, the largest electronics manufacturer in the world. This year she showed me her new iPhone. I don’t ******* understand. I don’t understand how people can be outraged at humanity abuses, yet do ******* nothing to help or change their ways. Yes, market solutions are ******* ****, but these commodities are still coming from somewhere, and while capitalism is in place, our money is still flowing back. I don’t understand how people can be concerned about ecological issues, then pour dishwashing liquid down the sink every night, dissolving the gills, eyes, and organs of fish in rivers and oceans. I don’t understand a ******* thing. I feel physically sick most days. I can barely function outside of university, because engaging with real people, in real systems, just reminds me of how careless, worthless, and disgusting they are. When I first turned vegan, my dad simply said plants are living too. Well no ******* **** dad, why didn’t you ask me my reason for turning vegan, rather than simply repeating the dumb **** everyone else says? If you were stuck on a desert island. Well I’m ******* not. I’m stuck on this **** world filled with nice people who don’t give a **** about anything. I’m stuck every week walking the same roads, to the same university, where I become more and more distanced from reality through abstract philosophical theories that no one else cares about. I’m stuck walking through the supermarket every week, to purchase overpriced commodities produced by transnational corporations I don’t support, but nonetheless have to buy to survive. What alternatives I buy are mocked because it's so funny being ethical in our day and age. Because it’s so much more normal eating pies, and drinking beer, and treating women like objects, and affirming nationalistic sentiments of white supremacy, and making fun of ethnic minorities while they’re incarcerated, and beaten, and killed. All lives matter, the liberal conservatives cry out, while doing ******* nothing to help any cause. I don’t understand this world, and I have no desire to be in it if this is all there is.
Francie Lynch Dec 2014
I have something systemic
That's not an emotion I know.
It's more than a feeling,
It's a metaphoric something,
Not literal, more figurative.
Empathy is close;
And it's certainly not sympathy,
That's too aristocratic and snobbish.
I could compare it to an older sister
Moving into her own bedroom;
Or an older brother vanishing
On the first day of school.
For example, I visited my friend, Oafy
In the nursing home.
He had his shoes on the wrong feet,
And he didn't care,
But I did. That sensational something
Is the gist of my systemic something.
It's human, probably universal,
Rational, not inane.
Mothers, I understand, sense it.
Fathers, being one, too.
Humanitarianism is a big part of it;
So is altruism,
But it's bigger than charity.
It's a connection with all the senses,
But real beyond cognition.
It's a field-tested faith,
But I don't know what to call it.
irma pielle Jul 2018
Yea of course,
I,
me,
a woman,
a black woman
a darker black woman to be exact..
have black privilege because thats a thing you know
Its like when I walk into the store and get followed ..  yea
or that time i came back to school with my “extensions” and was told my hair grows fast
or maybe its when a white person comes up to me asking if i listen to 21 savage because “black people listen to rap right?”
or my favorite is telling my brother to be safe
as he heads out the door worrying he may be shot for reaching for his wallet
maybe its when i worry about whether or not my brother or cousins or father will be the next Trayvon martin or Eric garner or philando castille even
my black privilege
has allowed me to be labeled as loud and ratchet and sometimes a ***
because that what dark skin black girls are
right ..
yea ….
thats black privilege
its getting told I'm pretty for a black girl
its being told I'm intimidating and mean and ugly natured
but no no i swear its not cause your black
I love black people I'm not racist
Slavery happened years ago
Black people are racist too
im not racist i just don't like black people  
yea … I've heard it all.
No !
im not just another “angry black girl”
Im just a black girl
Im not mad don't get me wrong
I just wanted to inform you on my black privilege
I wanted to inform you that it is NOT okay to touch my hair
that is NOT  okay to say to mock “black slang”
It is not okay to say “are you speaking english” when i talk
It is not okay to put my people through hundreds of years of slavery and oppression and systemic racism and TELL US TO GET OVER IT!
Im sorry excuse my tone of voice
but can you blame me for getting worked up when I have to worry about whether or not my people will come home at night
yea …
thats MY black privilege
Sam Bowden Dec 2014
Every time people start to rise up, a whole buncha problematic mess gets thrown around regarding VIOLENCE.
So, what is "violence" really?... It's the use of force. Plain and simple.
What makes folks uncomfortable (who are otherwise comfortable in this system) is that UPRISING IS A SOMETIMES VIOLENT (read: forceful) REACTION TO SYSTEMATIC VIOLENCE: Yes, just like the Hunger Games...
Thus, there are many types of violence...
The fact that we are paying taxes that are funding the genocide and ****** of people of color (here and abroad) is violence.
People with guns (former slave patrols and overseers, now cops) who come from outside our community and treat our folks as criminals on the daily is violence.
Capitalism, i.e. wage/property/ecology-based exploitation in the name of profit is violence.
The fact that LA County spends more $$ than anywhere in the world on prisons and police is violence.
The fact that the US locks up more of its own people than any other country on record is violence.
US aiding/funding the genocide of Palestinians at the hands of Israel is genocidal violence.
From Congress, to the boardrooms, to the classrooms, from the gaze, to the unwanted touching, to the ****, to the pay, Patriarchy everyday, is violence.
A few people jacking some **** at Walmart or breaking a window is really minimal violence in comparison.
A couple people throwing **** at armed cops is not serious violence.
The idea of owning property that other must rent to live is violent.
Systemic, chronic, global insecurity in the form of material poverty is violence.
Wage slavery is violence.
Gentrification is violence.
The War On Youth, i.e. the School-to-Prison pipeline, and, thus the War-on-Drugs with its attending 76% recidivism rate in the prison-industrial complex, whose populations are disproportionately black males, is violence.
The fact that people can't go to the doctor and dentist, or eat food every day is violence.
Deportations are violence.
Homophobia is violence.
The world's largest global military that vaporizes people without due process in dozens of countries violating their biophysical and national sovereignty is violence.
The United States government sanctioning the ****** of non-white, but especially Muslim bodies across the world... is violence.

So, when you condemn violence, do you mean resistance?
Because there is a whole lot of violence you should be condemning instead.

Adapted from Emilio Lacques-Zapien
Varshini Jul 2018
Most days, you're not a woman developer,
you're a developer.
You work just as hard,
You (try to) talk just as fast
You keep your feelings under the surface (barely)

Actually, scratch that
You're always a woman developer.
you're just so used to internalizing these habits
Trying to have confidence in your skills
despite the impostor syndrome pulling you down each time slowly, like quicksand
Trying to make up for the confidence you never had
compared to someone who always had it all
Trying to not cry in the kitchen because god who
is allowed to have feelings
Trying not to talk about men who made you uncomfortable because oh my god

for the fact that people call women overreacting
most men seem to make every little statement about them, have you noticed?
oh wow, isn't this just reverse sexism?
oh wow, can I even talk to women?

Being so vocal about being queer and Indian but if you make
one noise
one sound
one phrase
about your experience as a woman
because in such welcoming company you subconsciously thought why not

You let down your guard
But
There goes the shattered glass as the topic of gender-based discrimination is finally broached
There goes the thing nobody ever talks about
There starts the debate you did not want to participate in

"Oh wow you're so harsh to these guys"
"We were just slamming what they were doing, you slammed their actual personality wow"
"I just said they sounded like a brogrammer"
"sure if you say so"
"Isn't that just an arbitrary description"

How do you explain
How do you describe every nuanced experience about
Every male in your life
who have been exactly like this to you
How do you explain the light discrimination
The harsh discrimination
The systemic problem as a whole

How can you condense all this into a workplace environment talk
Where you don't usually talk about this?
Where you don't know if you can actually talk about this
Where you know that you ultimately don't want to talk about this
cuz how can you explain these feelings that they can never understand

You shut up and move on with coding.
But inside, you're conflicted with ideas of presentations to express the fact, or never speak about this again
Because in the end,
You're just a developer, not a woman developer to them.
(Disclaimer: This does not talk about nb people because the main context involved a woman and a man and about their interactions, do not mean to erase nb peeps ily)
JDL Nov 2018
A populace filled with totalitarian tranquility

The supposition that the world is in a harmonic homeostasis

Blissful ignorance that leads to careless calamity

Amid the uproar of the most populated of places

Therein lies the seed of humanity’s deceptive destruction

A solitary host housing a virulent virus

Infectious disease that proceeds crisis and corruption

Hope only stands with the powerful and pious

Prognosis describes communicable cannibalism

Rabid outbursts show signs of voracious violence

The harrowing pandemic leads to ceaseless cataclysm

Cities and towns suspended in systemic silence

Habitations riddled with gratuitous gore

Hope fades in the wake of the crimson carnage

The pestilent hoard feeds to a glutton’s galore

The Author of humanity publishes the final page

The closing verse rains down a rapturous recompense

The high cost of a dense population paid at humanity’s existential expense
Pearson Bolt  Sep 2015
t(error)
Pearson Bolt Sep 2015
they say you'll never forget
where you were on 9/11
i was nine
i sat in the kitchen
and watched the television
play out the violence hour after hour
my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers
in Tolkien's literary fantasy
with these acts of misanthropy  
and i was taught at the dinner table
that very evening
that all of life could be reduced
to capital letters defining a
cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil

and yet
regardless of their affiliation
on this defunct
political spectrum of
left left
left right left
politicians canonize a legacy of
injustice and oppression and
in order to suppress
democratic expression
they propagate the notion
that dissent is treason

because the wars we wage are blessed
by the sagely insight of rich old men
who sit safely in mansions protected by
picket fences as white as their skin
while they play off our emotions and
turn us into thoughtless sheep
content to stomach the whims of
politicians propagating vengeance

i will speak this out even
when my voice shakes
because i have seen the hypocrisy
of this war on terror
that relies on terror
to cultivate more terrorists
in order to perpetuate the notion
that Orwell posited

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is bliss
isn't it

in my naïveté
i rejected the reality of
torture and murdered children for
i nursed a secret hope that
despite the pictures and videos
that served as empirical evidence
we were still somehow
the good guys and
they were the bad guys

but Americans rained white
phosphorous on Fallujah
dropped the world's first
and hopefully last
atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
we toppled democratically elected socialists
whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas
cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination
regime change is the name of the game
just ask the CIA
they'd tell you
business is booming but
then they'd have to **** you

so i switched off my TV screen
and picked up books
i read Slaughterhouse-V
and treasured the way Vonnegut
looks at the lives of even
bees and butterflies as valuable
intoning "so it goes"
every time a living thing dies

i read O'Brien's
recollections
of Vietnam
a month later
he said that
like white lies
tall tales and
fishermen’s yarns
every war story
has a bit of truth

and i've seen the proof
in the photographs of
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay
in the aftermath of drone strikes
that left pieces of kids scattered
across the desert sands of foreign lands

i see the toxic side-effects of
systemic violence in the eyes
of homeless veterans suffering
on the streets with PTSD
a flicker of fear livens a
deadened gaze at the sound of
every backfiring engine
as if they're a thousand miles away
on some distant shore

betrayed by their own
government once again
a Purple Heart is
a death sentence
when there are 22
military suicides a day
thanks for your service
now die in silence

like bad religion the phrase
war crime is rather redundant
and i testify not because i
aim to disrespect the
men and women in uniform
on the contrary

when i say
**** war
it is because i
cherish every brother
and every sister
who has perished in the
churning gears of conflict

they shoved tall tales of hope
for a collegiate education
and far-flung travel
down our throats
just sign here
right along the dotted line

we want you
to march into hellfire
we want you
to send missiles into
tiny huts and villages
tracking cell phone signals
we want you
to sit down
shut up and
just do as you're told

to every fallen human who
has been sent off to fight on
behalf of this
or any other
corrupt nation
i sincerely apologize
for not taking to the streets to protest
a vitriolic ideology

i regret filing my taxes
when 54% or more of our budget goes to
military expenditures so they could
stick an M-16 in your hands
and ship you off to die for abstract
and so often arbitrary phrases like
freedom and justice for all

you were robbed of your liberty
by a capitalist system that seeks profit
like a false prophet for
bank accounts soar in times of war  
and in my apathy i hammered
nails into your coffin

and i pride myself on  
being an anti-militaristic
non-violent anarchist because
i don't hate soldiers
if i did i would remain
silent and apathetic
and let the government
abuse its youth

i celebrate humanity
regardless of ethnicity and creed
which is precisely why i despise
this system that sacrifices
generation after generation for
conquest and imperial notions

pray tell
will we turn from the
error of our ways
wake up from
this terrorist daze
before it's too late
and say

the State can try to
whitewash history but
i refuse to let them
brainwash me
I wrote this poem when a woman walked out of the venue after I read a poem about overthrowing the government. She told me her son was in the military and said he had buddies who died so I could have free speech. I wish she'd stopped so I could've responded to her the way I'd have liked to. Guess this will have to do.

— The End —