all the car toys i had to chew
just to feel like you
girl with no blood to bleed
be my Babylonian king
blow into the dusty empty
gamboy cartridge

A world of information
And I force ignorance
A wealth of answers
I skip class

This crowd of fans
I regret joining
This pile of dishes
I entertain starving
Endless color
Only one eye sees
We're certain to suffer
Ground coffee and teeth.

Current events
I should learn music
Mission critical
I can stay decent
The world stage
I hate theater
Grocery store small talk
Ask me something real.

A question of ethics
Always too easy
But every turn of a page
Still moves me 3 spaces
Leave me alone
I just need connection
But the clearest of thoughts
By ignoring my driver.

Moral panic
It happened so fast
Give to charity
All figured out.

Keep your head down
Chin lit by my phone
Mr. Good Employee
Call in late if it suits
Works well under pressure
And nowhere else
Appreciation, respect
More things to neglect.

A global economy
That troubling phrase
Where capitalism ends
Idealism fails
Save your pennies
The way out is in
Play your position
I'll quit the game
The simple life
Got confoundingly deep.

I have become too attached to you.

It effects me too much
when you don't respond to me quickly enough
when you add a song to our playlist
when you ask how my day is

When you leave me on read
I panic
I think the time has come
that you will leave me
too good to be true.

But is that the truth?
Will you leave me?
Have you decided that someone else is better than me?
Have you decided to go back to her,
the other girl who came before me?
Have I not showed you enough skin?

I panic and I wait for your response
I have become too attached
I avoid the things that remind me of you

I dream every night about you
How I wish I could tell you about it
My mind attaches itself to you, links my unconscious to you

What will I do, when you choose I am not enough for you?

What’s new about Hipsters? It’s not that they're the first co-opted counter-culture, far from it. The Beats were co-opted. The Sentimentalists, over 200 years ago, were co-opted before capitalism was so industrious. It’s not even new that calling a ***** a ***** is offensive. “Hippies,” “Beatniks,” “Emos;” all insulting labels for youth that thought they were much more.

There it is, or some of it, perhaps. Does the current so-called counter-culture feel like they’re part of something much more? Even without labels, I don’t think they think of themselves as a counter-culture at all. The worst part about it is the Hipsters and  non-Hipsters are really much the same. Falling for a similar niche, but feeling like they ain’t.

We all like flannel, thick glasses, and good beers. We’re all killing Applebee’s. We’re the waitstaff there who laughs at ourselves, cause we’re just so low-down. Not the last, but toward the bottom rung of a ladder that once meant progress beyond our parents’ lives. We stand for nothing and everything, because a secure tomorrow seems unlikely and unwanted. Beget suburban kids like our parents did? Could I buy them as much as I had? A student loan on top of a mortgage, I think I’m better off paying exorbitant rent. Plus, it just feels more temporary, like everything else.

Late twenties, long passed the age my parents conceived, I’m getting old. Lack of full adult independence, still feel floated in embryonic fluid, trying not to give juvenile hopes up.  Qualified for that secure job, but is it open? Maybe I’ll have to move down South. Just like everyone else.

At least there’s always music. Nearly a century of recorded songs. Indie, Scene, and Emo; the last real counter-cultures associated with rock genres, and most practitioners scoffed at these labels. Why didn’t Punks or Metal Heads care?

More pressing, what is the newest rock genre? Emo faded nearly 10 years ago. Some formation of Americana seems sorta fitting now. Not far from that “Indie” umbrella,  it’s what Hipsters seem to like most, at least in the TV commercials. These more choral, sometimes bluesy bands. Some are good, but it’s nothing new.

Now, the algorithms anticipate evolution years in advance. All tastes like Styrofoam, so we spit it out fast. We keep skipping tracks to futility escape the same persistent hum. All the price for our growing clairvoyance. Telescopically, we are flying fast into a wall that ends originality. Too many citations needed. We enter them into software to manage. Our fear of plagiarism makes one uninfluenced instead of inspired. We just make homages. Turn anything creative into a list of allusions.

We forgot to forget
Suspend St. Anselm
patron of using rationality
to explain away one’s faith
in magic and mystery
God exists because
all we can imagine must exist
Your unicorns are but
a mind’s fusion of
horse and narwhal
and your culture is but
a culmination of has-been trends
So it’s all been done
Why try to change a thing?
Why try to be new?

This is the end. Not reflecting and absorbing past cultures with an eye to the future. But judging and consuming past cultures with with a carnal now. There are some niceties to be gained in solely present preoccupations. Yet, no Buddha abounds in these selfish meditations. We are no longer the bodhisattvas, suspending enlightenment to save all beings. “We’re woke, because we know we’re ******” Then we type a symbol for “laugh out loud,” while our mouths stayed closed. We take a morning slug and drive off to work. The complexity of our controllers v. the simple fleeting pleasures. What can I do? Why should I bat an eye at the way the world works?

Anom o ly

Non-named, never imagined much less realized

The left hand can't know what the right is doing,
it's a brain matter, grey area, may be a way to
imagine your unique. task, yours, not doable from here

We can do things as us that we never imagine alone.

Is there a need to negate, wait, think,
must one do any act?
Now, I see, emulating Socrates is thought easier than
emulating Jesus. Christ, you know that ain't easy, eh?

Death is the friend of being. Things change from time to time
but, you know knowledge grows in two directions,
the dark part is not evil.
evil is as evil does. The roots that ever live in the earth,
those roots are required, requirements.

Left brain uses the right hand. Don't tell the left-hand
that nearly all it's skill in serving
and being used right,
is used up by the other side.
Right or wrong, is not a chiral question,  nor is good or bad. ******* Phillips's head screws with a butter knife is wrong.
It can be done right, but not if you turn it the wrong way.
Drawing on the right side of my brain has always symbolized a crossroads experience, in my mind.
I mean I draw, realistically, with my right hand, left brain.
Maybe, brains are no easier to analyze than time in an immaterial medium of messaging.

I am certain life wins.
Meaning everything you think life means.
Do you think evil is required as an activity for life to actively be?
I doubt that.
Death fixes everything. Fret not. Wait.

First make room, what was the Bronte word? Penetrium, no, cut n paste
[A]t once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason - Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge.

From <https://www.etymonline.com/columns/post/cloud-of-uknowing>

Happiness demands an agreement
Joy is in process, I agree, I am happy, haps happen and I notice

Note: Bronte was one to tweak fine puns with the word Penetralia: 1. The innermost parts of a building, especially the sanctuary of a temple. 2. The most private or secret parts; recesses: the penetralia of the soul. See Chapter one, Wuthering Heights.
----- From
bronteblog.blogspot.com/2006/03/emilys-penetralium_03.html

And who am I to stand here and preach
From my first world society
About how hard it is
To have depression and anxiety
When people are dying
Because of hunger and disease
Because our resources cant meet all of our needs
And all I do is consume
How dare you presume that I am complaining because
I'm not
I'm not