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

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

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

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

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

The living to themselves gossip attract,
but at death eulogies mitigate lies.
Love and care from he who breathes is withdrawn,
but his slumber does attract parties.

Fake mourners with feigned tears in burials act.
They rip off and use the grieving as pawns;
Their loss is their gain, their tears their laughter.
To fill their stomachs, they sob and flatter,
as they to misery dance, from dusk till dawn.

Whilst alive, at my deeds everyone frowns.
But at death, I am a departed 'saint'
whose sepulcher you spray with costly paint.

If you must celebrate me, do so now.
Do not in reverence to my casket bow.
Visit me now in my ramshackle house,
sharply rebuke me if you have a grouse.
Do as much you can to show you love me,
do not when I sleep go on bended knee.
Never belatedly show your respect
by attending my funeral in retrospect.

I am an unruly child; I
drink in bed and create
messes and tell lies
all the time.
I'm late, I disobey.
I don't eat over the table
or chew my food
or say I love you enough.
I exclude. I avoid.
And when I say to
behave one way
and act another,
I want you to understand;
I am an unruly child
no one to look to,
trying to guide you.

4.
Patterns of sugarless fairytales:
Field of reeds
Beckoning strings,
Robots in the garden,
Theory of the crows
Favorite lunch spot
Right in front of the window
Where we sit and drool
Our later years away.

24.
Amusement parks on fire,
The new improved hypocrisy.
Amusement parks on fire,
The science of imaginary solutions.
Amusement parks on fire,
The masses in line for the ride.