"commodify" poems
Sitting in a café waiting t̶o̶ ̶d̶(̶l̶i̶v̶e̶)̶i̶e̶. There is dogfood art on the wall and I’ve got nice coffee from a barista [Barbie] with tattoos. Pull in one [a(?)] direction already. Like a kite in a park with no kid attached. Gone, going, past. Compliments are t̶o̶o̶ ̶c̶h̶e̶a̶p̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶f̶e̶e̶l̶ valuable these days. “All the girls drink for free.”
**** **** FuckFuckFuck.”
******* Drink your sweet, dark-cherry stained lips. Dead eyes masked in mascara masquerading as more. “Bought with bourbon and goes down easy.”
Commodify, objectify, consume. Transactional romance drives a BMW.
Jul 17, 2016
Jul 17, 2016 at 7:32 PM UTC
Glowing faces
In beautiful destinations
Saying "Pay me so I can show you how to live like me"
Give them your money, your time
Their joyous lives fill your Instagram feed,
Filling you with a insatiable need
To consume what the lifestyle they are selling
Life coaches, spiritual masters, transformation guides
All these people who've got the life
While you turn to them
Through your screen
Looking to them to tell you what life means
They say "Pay up, happiness isn't free"
And you scramble in search for money,
Because they say they sell what you need
You work your nine to five,
And live your tired life
You try to make ends meet
Your kids are ungrateful,
Never looking up from their myriad screens
Your husband left you
In search of a woman who looks like she could be in her teens
You eat your ramen, no, it's not gluten free
You wonder how your life got to this--
In two words: Miserable drudgery
You go on social media,
Look at all these lifestyle gurus
Talking about how happy they are
That they could burst at the seams
They've got the money,
And the perfect honey
And the luxuries,
They take selfies on distant beaches,
Smiling cheek to cheek
They are happy
And they are trying to sell you their lifestyle
They create e-courses, e-books, e-everything-and-anythings
On how to follow what they did
to become so happy, so wealthy, so blessed
It's all a mindset, they teach
You can get anything you desire
If you work hard enough for it
It's a revolution,
With all these self love lifestyle gurus
Infiltrating social media
But are we selling our souls,
To these people
who don't truly understand
What it's like to be you?
What it's like to be financially poor,
Abandoned and lonely,
Unattractive by society's standards,
I'm not saying they haven't been through
their own stuff,
But can you really commodify a lifestyle?
Can you put a price tag on helping others?
Especially when that price tag is thousands of dollars?
This help is for the privileged,
And those that need help the most
will go without,
as usual
I guess I just crave humility
In this selfie culture,
I truly ache for authenticity,
Real helping,
Real healing,
And not all of this showiness,
Disguised as expressing gratitude for your amazing life
On social media
Perhaps we can all wake up
From the spectacular little daydream of our own lives
To the reality of the worldwide suffering going on right at this moment
Maybe if we stopped posting about the atrocities on the news,
Got off our phones
And did something to change our world,
Things would be different.
Dec 26, 2018
Dec 26, 2018 at 12:50 AM UTC
power pose
in front of the angry men
"we're not scared of you"
but they should be
she spits fire bright
from lips she wears matte dark
she's digging the perfectly manicured claws into the palms of her hand
hands that bring incredible generosity
and incredible pain
depending on how audaciously you approach her
with your alcohol-stenched breath
and a body that takes up space
but contains nothing of substance
aside from liquor of course
an empty, angry vessel of wordy slurs and slurred words
she knows they don't deserve her tears
they should feel grateful to receive even a smirk
an ounce of her attention
in this economy
with the men who untuck their shirts after a long day's work
unaware of what the women have been up to
is priceless
you can't commodify what you can't touch
they are not beds waiting for you
to lay down on
to make your lives easier
while you weigh down upon ours
her silk sheet skin
and the comfort of knowing she will be there at 2pm and 2am
this is her home
this body is an address
it is not your residence
loiterers will be fined
she will be fine
power pose
the power grows
this is your power prose
because mama,
you will be fine
Sep 5, 2017
Sep 5, 2017 at 6:50 PM UTC
Alienate my body and mind,
commodify my core;
Is my existence
a means to a profit?
The 21st century's commercial *****
My labor is not mine,
my art is not mine;
Everything I create
liscensed and taken,
another addition to a capitalist's shrine.
I understand the poached animal:
Ripped apart,
skin and teeth hung for all to see,
and then, admired for its beauty.
Nov 25, 2018
Nov 25, 2018 at 7:07 AM UTC
Bird with serrated leather jacket collar
When you sip that drink and hit yourself with a mauler
Drop a sigh, with your eyes toward the sky
but don’t fly,
it’s alright to sit low, cry, stay back home in July,
and just standby.
There is no need to commodify
You’re not a lousy fly stuck in a rut
nor a feather helplessly swinging into dirt
You’re a singer singing each note
with your unbuttoned white shirt
and a chain of daisies around your throat
And remember the melodies your senses wrote?
There are places you will go,
when you follow the lilts in your heart’s own flow,
and when into resonance the murmur grows,
there can be no better show
there can be no better show
Jun 25, 2019
Jun 25, 2019 at 4:48 PM UTC
disclaimer:
I’m thinking about the hourglass in your mouth.
this is what is left behind
when the dust has settled.
please find attached:-
my heart.
my apoplexy, this, your words bleeding into me
settling, stagnant
clotting around the end of us -
salvaging the wound.
to have something, but not be able to truly hold it,
liquid, seeping through your fingers -
to see it pooled on the floor, the remnants of something you had
so transiently your fingers don’t even feel wet with it,
[not at all]
not when you’d rather be immersed.
you see, I don’t like to be in my body because it only serves to
remind me where your hands once were.
when all you want is what you had,
what is left behind in your palms?
whispers of the last time they were held,
and a kind of vacancy you don’t want to fill.
[close your eyes, breathe,
count how long it takes to fall apart]
interesting
to think of the systemic effects of heartbreak.
interesting
how you can pull one heart string and I’ll unravel.
I know I’ve been a shadow of myself lately;
it’s called “going through the motions”,
apologies.
safe as in a place,
safe as in your arms,
safe as in has-been once-was
and never again.
what happens when the goods commodify themselves?
I have never missed someone like I miss you,
have missed you since the day of my exile from your heart
a concept: existence as a kind of festering,
as though I’m in the last place I saw you like a finger probing the wound,
septic and exactly the wrong kind of comfort:
there is no unloving.
it comes in waves - the weight and salt of it
makes my back ache and my eyes sting.
you see, I’ve never been vulnerable like this before, and I’m wondering if
there’s a limit as to how broken a person can be,
the same way you can only fold a piece of A4 paper in half seven times?
I wanted to be unforgettable
and now I’m just trying to Be,
hoping that somewhere I linger
eat my feelings,
stick pencils down my throat
***** poetry.
if my heart is on my sleeve and my sadness upon my eyelids;
then my belly is a processor,
and all it spits out is simply
a checklist
of all the things we could have been
- our morphogenesis, our eulogy.
please. thank you.
Mar 20, 2018
Mar 20, 2018 at 6:12 PM UTC
I live underground—
with fiendish hands
that reach through
the dirt and mass,
grasping at a sound.
To their mile-wide gaze
of white wall eyes,
my lungs collapse,
crumble and fold—
taken in and out of sight.
Through earthly glass,
I am a broken con artist.
My cries, a faux pas,
my skin off-brand,
while somewhere
a heart beats, embodied.
Amidst
this push-pull throng,
a long goodbye speaks
to dead space,
bearing dead weight
down on the world—
Commodify my breath.
Call me sanctioned off.
Ship me to the doorstep
of a funeral home,
where I can be buried again
in my fever-hot coffin.
One would call it a soul,
forever dropping in—
from the other side.
Nov 1, 2024
Nov 1, 2024 at 7:33 AM UTC