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Grace Jordan Apr 2017
My feelings on the world are a complex dichotomy. If I could control the world, my rule would be to control nothing. To give freedom and agency to everyone and let every culture and kind shine as they do and **** superiority and focus on growth, not *******.

But, not all people aren't as communally minded as that. And though in theory I could change the rules, I can't change people.

In its own way, that's beautiful. The visceral strength and resiliency of humanity fascinates me, with the chaotic undertones that lie beneath every eye. I love the spectrum of pain and brilliance it brings. But it also makes a utopian world of understanding and lack of control impossible to keep people safe; because never will there be a human race that doesn't at least have some people craving absolute control.

I think this dichotomy within myself parallels my standing with humanity very well. There is something on most every end I can find fascinating: free will, selflessness, unpredictability, tenacity. But also I can never seem to be pleased with how humanity could be but never amount to.

Not that it gives me much trouble. I've always kept humanity at an arm's length, choosing books and stories over the flesh-bags in front of my face. The only thing I ever struggled with was not being normal with my human relationships, and trying to make my methods match.

My methods won't match because I might as well be an alien for all I care about directly interacting with humanity.

Yet, I love humanity, in a way. I could write about human transcendence and growth until I die. I am madly in love with human potential. But I don't love humans. I don't love a species that muscle arms its way into dominance and can be arrogant and small-minded. After all we've managed to accomplish, and we're still start wars over skin color and scapegoating? Its laughable, in a way.

I suppose I look at humanity as if I was an alien scientist. I have no way of measuring things or conducting research because I'm foreign, but I can see the greatness in their eyes and am floored by it. Yet I also see the violence in their eyes and am repelled by it. The most tragic, push and pull love of my life has been for this species.

I've learned lately I'm okay with being alien. But its strange to find a foothold in a world where I feel constantly at odds and different.

But I like strange, so I think its what works best.

Between humanity and me, things are complicated. Things are wonderful and painful and all worth the while in its own, ****** way. I suppose all I have is my words and I'll share them, and humanity can listen if it will. I hope it will. I hope it can help people who feel like aliens too, and maybe then being an alien and a human can be easier.

But for those things, we'll just have to see.
Rollie Rathburn Apr 2019
While capable of achieving abstract thought of the highest order, the human brain tends to function best when compartmentalizing data into manageable pieces. For example, the state in which one resides is useful in a macro view of geolocation, but largely useless when it comes to ordering a pizza. As such, our species developed streets, postal codes, cardinal directions, and a whole host of determining factors to describe your home with enough clarity to ensure your disc of cheesy goodness arrives safe and sound.

By this same token, we break down and discuss music. For the most part, all humans can say that they enjoy music to some degree or another.  But for those whose passion extends beyond using the radio for background noise, there’s a point where the specificities of what we absorb aurally merges with part of our socio-cultural identity. Whether this is reflected in your sudden urge to wear strapped sandals and listen to Grateful Dead live bootlegs while slack-lining or constantly refreshing a subreddit so you know which warehouse space is hosting a tech-house set until dawn, the most passionate amongst us eventually become that which we absorb. These things become fractalized versions of ourselves. After all, someone who has never had their heart broken probably won’t appreciate Elliot Smith as much as the rest of us.

It is on the fringes of these musical personalities that we find *******. Combining the most aggressive tendencies of metal with the politics and personality of street punk, ******* is an amalgam of all things angry. Exhibiting a neb-tribalism not often seen in other subsets of music, ******* “kids” (Kids can be used to define ages ranging from 13 to 45 depending on context) understand that a sweaty basement filled with people pummeling one another will never become a societal norm. And they revel in the misanthropy.

However, this is not to say that ******* kids are fueled only by rage. From it’s inception in punk scene during the late 1970’s, the entire point of ******* has been to create a community dedicated to supporting one another during our darkest times. Sure that occasionally means punching your friend in the head, but that’s only because we haven’t figured out how to punch the geo-political turmoil of Earth in the head just yet.

Whether extolling the virtues of veganism, Straight Edge, ecocriticism, economic inequality, anti-racist and anti-racist movements, or simply just talking about how alone we can feel inside of our own heads, ******* at it’s best seeks to improve the space husk we’re all floating around on. By virtue of these lofty goals, ******* swiftly takes on a communal nature due to the common belief that we are all united against an existence which does not reflect us. Rob Lind said it best: “*******’s not much. But for some of us, it’s all we’ve got.”

Then one clear morning in December, my father died. And suddenly ******* was all I had left.

Obviously, I still had my siblings and friends. But after all, the ethos of ******* always managed to echo everything my father taught me to believe. Whether that be standing up for someone getting picked on because they’re different, refusing to place trust in authority, or rallying all the other lost souls and building your own society two steps to the left of the mainstream.

So, as an autopsy was being performed to ensure the skin, organs, and long bones of Robert Rathburn’s arms were harvested for donors, I stood in the alleyway of the Nile Theater listening to the bass reverberate through the asphalt as Iniquity, Beg For Life, Troubled, No Altars, and Iron Curtain played to a packed basement below.

Admittedly, this was a show I was supposed to be reviewing, and this piece was also due months ago. However, my time was instead spent shaking hands and hugging people I’ve spent the better part of 20 years building a small, fractured, but loving community with. At the end of the day, I suppose that’s all ******* has ever and should ever be about. Communally channeling the hurt and anger into fists and screams until it stings a little less and the emptiness of the world wanes ever so slightly.
The Challenge is, my veritable pantheon of followers,
is to describe thyself, without thy name,
in 6 stanzas
of your rhythmic, syllabic and linguistic choosing

Write these as your own poems
and link them to me in comments, below,
and I shall do the same as a separate piece
(when I get home from my show in Sacramento tonight)

Ye, who accepteth this, my humble Challenge
shall earn major kudos
and I shall be flattered and honored
and truthful, in turn, in mine.

I think this could be inspirational and communally entertaining and enlightening.
What sayeth thou, my friendly Fellows,
Will my Challenge be taken?
Mitchell Jul 2013
As I struggle to see
From my own two eyes,
Breath builds and

Falls

From swollen lungs.

I am fighting to get back,
To get back
To where I once was.

But in this moment,
Discovering to go back to anywhere
Is a pointless, treacherous
Thing to do.

And though the clues
I have gathered
And the luck I have enjoyed
Has shows to be
all obliviously received.
I still feel as if I have gained

Nothing.

What I have learned is as
Befitting as army boots on a butterfly,
Or as
Loving as a newly sharpened dagger or - better yet -
As necessary as a poet who sees beauty but cannot write it down.

Eight halves of these white, dirtied windows
Stand reflecting the building across from me.

Am I happy, or am I just going through the motions?

And when I look into these mirrors - stained and
Pulled - the sight reminds me of how we frail people
Also pull the shade when someone may be looking too close.

Halves of an eclipsed moon.
At both ends of the pool.
Shallow and deep.
Desperate to be entered.
Anxiously awaiting one's solitude.

Our secrets
Are their secrets, her and his and grandma's secrets,
The neighbors and the mayor's,
The mother's and the crooked lawyer's.

Communally burrowing away,
Protecting ourselves from ourselves.
We forget that the sun is our father
And the Earth our infinite never-ending mother.

And we simply their passing and coming
Children.

Failure
Can be an art

But a Masterpiece is made by
Taking all of one's past failures

Bringing its

Daggers
Sorrows
Pains of blows siphoning hope

So to create
Only something
You could make.

After experience comes loss,
Fading from light to darkness.
Only to seek a new
Experience to bring the light again.

At noon the bell will toll.
A sound created to ensure and protect.
Everyone needs something to
Fall back on sometime.

Quivering eye
Scared and fearful of man's forgetful mind.

There is a shape others make
To remember the dead so to make themselves
Feel more apart of life than death.

Some wish to live forever.
Others wish to die in battle.
Others in peace.

I wish to die the way the clouds do:
Burn off and to appear again

On another pearl blue horizon.
Lacey Clark Nov 2018
I've lived somewhere over 50 homes by now.

The ones that stick out?

In Portland I rented a micro-studio. My first apartment I signed a lease on by myself. It had no in-unit kitchens: there was a communal kitchen on floor one. Bed came out the wall. best description: trendy, affluent, hipsters who want to live communally in theory, but eat out every day instead. Communal kitchen was empty. No one was ever home. We all went to the food carts across the street, later replaced by a hotel.

in Florida we had a pool (even the poor have pools in Florida) and the neighborhood ice cream truck sold drugs. That’s not important. It was the pool! I lived like a mermaid and it was the same pool I had my first kiss next to.

In Wisconsin we lived above a bead shop that turned into a dress shop that rented out prom dresses to the town. I watched the cozy middle-class flock to the shops beneath me. For being a town of 1,000 we had the coolest apartment since I could spy on the whole town and their frequent trips to the bakery.

In North Carolina we lived in a neighborhood called 'beverly hills' in Asheville - the house was interesting, not very bourgeois as the neighborhood title suggested. I wanted to turn the basement into a gaming center for kids. I spent a few days sweeping the spiders away and saved all of my summer allowance to buy Rock Band. We moved before I had anyone over.

My favorite house will always be my grandmother’s - somewhere in the middle of 20 acres in Eastern Oregon is my own version of an oasis. It is dry land, full of tumbleweeds and prone to wildfires, but something about the smoke stained carpets and 24/7 television noise feels most like home.
Sal Gelles Aug 2013
it sickens me;
the lack of correction
in grammar,
in punctuation,
in style,
and in titling.

it disgusts me;
the apathy
and support
that go along with
spilling any idea
out; vulnerability
shouldn't be praised,
as it should be sculpted
and shaped, communally.
a sociopath's political piece
jeffrey robin Apr 2015
anyone and everyone

who is a True Human Being

is said to be a CULT MEMBER

//

to cherish LOVE

and to speak of the sacredness of human feelings

about other human beings

Is called

TAKING THE CHILDREN FROM

TRUE AMERICAN VALUES

//

To speak of

DYING TO KEEP AMERICA FREE

is proper

TO ACTUALLY LIVE FREELY

is evil degenerate communism

( unless / of course / by

FREEDOM

you mean

Unregulated financial markets

••

To read the bible and proclaim

BELIEF

is the highest you are allowed to go

//

to actually EXPERIENCE god is taboo

And is in fact considered a

SOCIAL CRIME

and is the bedrock of CULT activity

••

In this environment

Where does the concept of

PHYSICAL LOVE

fit in ?

//////

Well

It seems that if we keep it

Between

OURSELVES AND OUR CHOSEN LOVER

it is glorified and accepted

especially if it leads to the inevitable

BREAK UP

to the inevitable

BROKEN HEARTS !

and the weakened and even lost

SPIRITUAL POWER

that has decimated our entire generation

It is fine with the Authorities

///

But if it is seen

as a SOCIAL  PHENOMENON

a communally shared exaltation of the PEOPLE

of FAMILY

of BIRTH

of OUR COMMON FUTURE AND DESTINY

then it is called

A RETURN TO CULT-HIPPIE DAYS

//

In other words

HAPPINESS IS STRENGTH

and so the political powers want to discourage it

And distort what it really is

In order to keep us WEAK

//

Once we acknowledge this

We see the choices we have

And thus we can be REAL

and HAPPY

and TRULY SATISFIED

and TRULY FREE
Morgan Rain Dec 2013
in their strings
music and things
i find sanctuary
in their beauty
misunderstood egos
souls
artists
musicians share love
each sound that they make
ready to share
but also eager to listen

as a writer
watching them sets my mind a fire
inspired, infatuated
with people so communally creative
fellow writers '
leave me alone
criticized
as we watch each other
un
inspired
Michael Marchese Feb 2018
I’m the cracks in the ice geist
The thief in the night light
The reason you can’t even go to sleep
When you’re hype Skype
The read it and write sleight
Of hand with that left heist
The best and brightest western spittin’-Spetnaz platoon type
The jungle, it’s coming
Oh, they want you there runnin’
That whole backwards crazy cooky communally-driven country,
That refuses to bow,
To the lion’s lie crown,
Because the tigress is the Ganga
And she’s watered this ground,
With cheetah archer princes blue
Through pacifistic aestheticians
Who still burn to the moon,
To feel her Saraswati peace of mind
Evoke the monsoon
Mark Wanless Nov 2017
"Moldering Thoughts"


Half formed moldering thoughts
Subconsciously caught in an envelope
Of time
Are reality
To some and many
Existence is a burial
In the stream of awareness
Of communally approved ideas
Views and concepts
Which are allowed to filter in
And build the ego
That is the shaping force of desire
And aversion
Which moves the body mind heart
To be what fits the pattern
That promises survival
No matter how it feels to exist
As such a creation
David Noonan Jan 2020
I felt that i would age easier
never once having been young
Yet how could I hope to finish a race
that a starting pistol had not begun
So the crowds they stand assembled
with that ticker tape pulled so taut
I'm chipped and pinned from today
as my mortality begins it's rot

I'm digitised and I'm monetised
a childhoods faith long since lost
Personal decline shared communally
as another nail is mounted on this cross

Yet we slow reveal that we have a tribe
through a lonely sax on the mystery train
We shall survive to take another step
a radio dial through the driving rain
Towards that path of lifes confusion
to start again how would it feel
As night does fall and day does break
we mould these chains to our tribal wheel
james nordlund Jul 2020
While **** continues to refuse to use the DPA to nationalize
the production and distribution of effective testing and PPEs,
which would save taxpayers 100's of billions of dollars over-
spent on gouged prices, and 100's of thousands of their lives,
he continues to preach his 'corona schmorona' policies at his
super-spreader of disease rallies, exterminating republicans.

They say, 'time is longer than twine', and 'to err is human,
to forgive, divine'.  It's unforgiveable, n'er forgettable.  Yet,
Joe's persistent perseverance in reminding our nation who
"..we(e),.." are and can be, not just life, relation in motion,
being evoking art, and illimitable potential, indivisible as
life, growing communally, yet also citizens of a great Union.
Remember, they finally settled on this attack when all others failed against Hillary, she wasn't "perfect"; excuse her for not being born a Black man.  As well, who is "perfect", no one; also, we shouldn't allow the perfect to be the enemy of the possible, the good.  If you didn't vote Hillary, you voted for the global criminal conspiracy to illegally install the **** of Utin into the Black House; they're at it again- don't you allow over-confidence, apathy, complacency, nihilism, self-possession, etc., to do it again, please.  Copy, share as you will.  Thanx for all you do, have a great day   :)   reality
Ken Pepiton Jul 6
If life had made up a mind,
in the neighborhood I formed from
communally, we might all notice, we'ld agree,
we might not be the first to say, we know.

But you know, life, or the active agents of it,
makes up our minds willingness to look, see if it

might be meaningful when seen another way.

The flipside of freedom to choose, what may
be taught
to children, and what must not,
under any circumstances, be allowed known,

before a child has reached the bloom of youth,
the useful strength age, draft age,
pulled into the slipstream
of easy will
to prove worth, true grit, traction,
hobnail boots, true secret weapon, stick
and stay, and make it pay, the exploitation
unwinding wars perfected reasonings,
to the victors go the spoils, boys,

discomplication has begun, the unraveling
of ever, once again, the stories tell, the tale,
told in tapestry since Carol King, at least,

during the era of top-forty aimed at boomers,
the largest cohort of like-minded consumers,
ever propagated using pride of new knowing,
to push the value proposition
in Alcoa over Kaiser.

What local tax-base funded schools,
were required to do, in Massachusetts,
as Brahmin first intention to mass convert,
depended on a deluder, and a deceiver,
to do the work,
first make believe God can hate you,
for knowing what Eve knew, some how.

Original disconnection from the wisdom,
sin leaves no mark, but in the faith abused,

to aim, and miss, leaves no stain, aim right…

use the logic words prove, knowing one
is not enough, each can mean so many-
possible provables, using patience, truths as
developed the rules for inclusion in the deme,
the select few among the many called, whom we
deem among the elect, to whom much is given,

from whom much is required, as noblesse oblige,
indeed, duty to God and Nation, County, if you will,

Natural words twist across old sores
from bully brothers, mollified by battle buddies,
those who bore the brunt,
those Bonus Expeditions,
those dust bowl pawns,
those road builders, and bridge builders,
that made the old days look real good
on television… Dizzy Dean,
and ***** Mays, and that one year,
there in the story that took us through
the Sixties, right up to 2024, the summer
any boomer alive in 1954 remembers,
Maris versus Mantle, and the tub scene in ******…
make up the mind that remembers Beatle Wigs,
And Whammo everything, every fad we had,
let that mind never really
recover after the exposure to war, from inside…
that few,
those boys, men, now,
this wedom, tuned to my signal, thinking, dams

break, eventually, all the dams doing damage,
to the original intention allowing letters to work,
break free and wild,
as magi slowly brought back wit,
the bit of branching used
to make us think once
more an old idea, we
think slow, like a all day sucker…
make an image, I, mage of my own eyes,
Lo', I see, and say, hey, you, can you see,

does that flag,
still hold the dowery,
those stars in field of blue
above the BEIC stripes of red,
on a background as white as this?

This vast empty white space,
white wall between us now, you
and we the instigating impulsive wills

to know, sublime, beyond simple,
serious knots to learn to tie,

turbans telling Sikhs, the ontology,
why we are we, the chosen ones, and

the others, those we, must imagine,
have another reason for being, as we

have crossbred, or so it seems, as we
continue using old war reasoning schema

constantly trying to find the art official.

Riches and ease of existing, does, in fact,
lead to slavery, the will is made subject
to the feeding power, always, the owner
owns the user's fees, this is only right, see

first come, first served,
woe be the Juans who come late,

get one shot,
blow it, and you blow it for as long as
the will you failed to do was yours as

in the holy scriptures, all versions, common
thread, the planet we became on,

common, clean enough to make use,
we use raw letter A formt secret intent
to think, we used to say, no word wasted,
to the t we cross and the I we dot. or don’t/
recall each inflection in the fashion shown
courtly, while
in judgment found being wanting,
will to make a way to reimagine, a we to
think the original intention taught to you, for your
attention paid, intently, learning, we who read,

know more than they who can, but don't.

Some learn late, some never learn.
Fools make children laugh, who pays the fools?

If I die before you read this, did the words feel flat?

I trow not, letting this mind found made up, be
just right, among unnaturally neighborly bears,
some thing lingers from first intentions,
it truly can be imagined, just so.

After all the amendments needed.
To undo the original malintentions,

tie your hopes to those whose riches came
from ancient forms of diversion during deciding

the fate of the functioning laboring classes.

This is now the zone f-
from Gol'ilocks, original intent.

fsure, strue, suptyou
step on a crack, breaks yo momma back.
Reasoning was never taught where I went to learn political correctness.

Are there no fifty year olds who want to be President?
Michael Perry Apr 2021
GRAVITIES

My world does and will always
continue to revolve  around you
each day and night, we share the air
between us, your world inhabits mine
like two orbits fully in synch, we come
to occupy the same space communally  
we rotate  throughout our day to day  
being pushed and pulled as our gravities
take us to here and there, but at the
end of each day, we will resolve, to be
each others gravitational pull, hand in hand
we will watch as the sun and moon goes down
over another day fully shared, we have the stars
in our eyes, countless and counting, all the while
keeping us grounded to each other, for this is
our mutual world, a space shared, we call it, home  

by Michael Perry
Ryan O'Leary Mar 22
Schoolhouse 1887 -



There were two separate entrances,

  segregated cloakrooms, external

   toilets off in the furthest corners.

      A well, a suspended bucket,

  for ablutions. Distinct play areas.


     Classes divided by a masonry

           pale. Only evidence of

     anything communally shared

      is a chimney breast, hearths

       either side, a two *** house.


   Under floor holds some historical

surprises. Coins with hens and pigs

   and fish a hare a fainleogh a bull.

   No sign of the horse, half crowns

         hardly communion money.


     There are old paintings on the

         wall, over wainscotting, in

       crayon still to be seen even

      today (where they will remain)

     If I can help it, long after - 2024.

— The End —