when me an Gnat split
we kept our eyes open,
cause we could close them,
behind blindness,
and I could take her soul
for nothing,
and I could keep it forever,
so now what we do,
is set fire to those
in the same situation,
we put their hearts
on our grills,
and tell them to wait
until they have regained
the fire,
so then,
society wasn't ready
for the realest ****** alive,
becuase by then
society
had told them
that ******,
emos,
true-*** emos,
them *******
could just drop
everything
to keep you on the low-low,
and they were the realest
I ever knew.

I feel for others but can't relate
That's destine and fate
I don't always know what to say
I dk the feeling but try to understand
Been on both sides one alive
The other is feeling dead inside
Trust is hard after being served betrayal
Years off being closed off not easy to open up
You want things to change but feel the same
Day after day time after time
Pushed out but once in its whatever
All the hazing meant for better

Don't always wear black
Don't worship Satan
Are NOT evil
Do not want to **** people
Do not hate everybody
Are not always depressed
Can be happy to
Are usually nice people
Are normal, just like you

Pretty color, pretty smile,
I hear your loudest cry
     Inside.*

© 2015 J.S.P.

you say I'm emo
just because I wear black a lot.
You say I am a queer
because I give my best friend a hug, and he just happens to be a guy.
You think I cut
just because I have scars on my wrist.
Truth is,
none of the stuff you say is true.
See, emo has become a fad.
Everyone wants to have attention.
But us "real emos" will tell you that its no fun.
I can't...we can't control when we are happy and sad,
glad and mad.
Its a ****** feeling.
I do not wear black because I worship Satan,
I wear black because it fits me
I do not wear my band shirts to be cool,
I wear them because they represent who I am.
I do not listen to rock music because I have problems,
I listen to it because the screaming helps my blood flow.
I don't expect you to know what it's like to truly be
emo
The only time you say that word,
the only time you say us
is when you make fun of us.
My hair is not long just to cover my face,
my hair is long because I like it that way.
You expect us to be like you,
but yet you rob us of our happienes.
Well,
who the **** are you to call me emo?
huh?
What do you truly know about depression.
Because your idea of depression is when you get grounded,
and my idea of depression is when I hold a blade to my neck.
You think depression is just tears,
but nope.
Its painful,
draining,
almost numbing.
This isn't even the start.
Do not call me emo,
because of what you think
because you will never know me
I won't let you get to know me
because I don't want that pain.
You are a ******,
and one of the reasons why
*I'm emo

I wake up and feel something is askew.
Then I remember what I heard last night on the news.
Then I push it aside and turn on the TV.
I’m sure someone can deal with it better than me!
Our politics are failing. Society’s flailing.
Getting’ crushed under the weight of our own pompous detailing.
But I don’t mind, there’s nothing I can do.
I’ll just grab a bite, get another tattoo.
Maybe by the time I’m done, it’ll have worked itself out.
If it hasn’t I’ll just shut my eyes and think of something else!

I guess I could try to make a difference,
But I’ve got more important things I have to deal with.
Like the season finale of my favorite show,
A bottle of Jack to finish and a party to throw!
I guess I can try to help out, if I’ve got the time. We’ll see.
Hey, look! Beer over there is buy-one-get-one-free!
I gotta stock up for the big game tonight.
Gotta go. I’m sure you got the problem covered, right?

Drunks and liars and posers, you’re fired.
Idiots, *******, worldwide mob masses.
Outcasts that walk alone, self-loathers, homophobes.
Jesus freaks. One more drink. Intelligence levels sink.
Dumb jocks and ******. Gangbangers. Guerilla wars.
Drop the dime, save the time. Pretend you’ve lost your mind.
Uppers and downers. Immigrants, minors.
Emos and cheaters, and ******* wife-beaters.
****** ex-girlfriends, freaks, frauds, text message sends.
Alcoholics relapsing. Governments collapsing.
Oil spills, anything for thrills. Hold on, just one more ****.
Suicide bombers, no mothers, no fathers.
This world’s so ****** up, how will it end up?
I don’t wanna know, don’t wanna see.
Don’t make me face reality!

if panic! at the disco
is just the store brand
version of fall out boy

(an open mic frank sinatra
impersonation with a forehead
and the emos are a classical
knife wound in pop culture)

then i am just the
store brand version
of who i used to be

looks about the same
tastes about the same
easier on your wallet
but something's a little off
and you can't
figure out what

but it doesn't actually
matter that much
it's just oatmeal

(i don't know why i
decided on oatmeal for this
it was just the metaphor
that came to mind)

and it will all be
gone by next week
anyway so

who actually
cares as long as
we've got some
kind of breakfast?

ou
'querer' em quatro tempos*


1.
Você está aqui
Eu estou lá
Perco o espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Todos querem
Um pedaço de mim agora.

2.
Você está aqui
Eu estou lá
Prendo-me ao espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Porque querer foi
O que sempre fiz(emos).

3.
Você está aqui
Eu estou aqui
Cegos ao espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Amanhã, quando 'quero' for
Sinônimo de 'podemos'.

4.
Você está lá
Eu estou lá
Partes do espetáculo
Por querer
Demais, mas
Sem querer--
Querer nunca foi,
O suficiente, foi?

"Isn't it incredible,"
She queried,
"There's an addicting collection of lifestyles before us...
And we can be any of them!"

"Marissa, you genius,"
Said I,
"You brilliant, amazing, genius!"
She had articulated perfectly the way I felt about the world in front of us.

There were the usual crowds--
The jocks,
The nerds,
The theatre kids,
The band geeks,
The stoners,
The gamers,
The popular chicks,
The emos,
Et cetera, et cetera.

All with their own quirks,
Their idiosyncrasies,
Their peccadilloes,
Warts and shines.

There were other kinds of crowds, too,
Though.

There was the girl with thin scars on her thin wrists,
A part of the lonely crowd that grappled with a common demon.

The boy who wore the same sweatshirt every day,
Who'd recently begin to sport some peach fuzz above his upper lip,
Who often smelled of body odor and whose hair was a little too greasy.
The one who was a member of the horde of quiet poor--
Smart enough to fool you,
But not wealthy enough to keep up.

The student who slept through class,
Part of the group for whom school offered an escape from the wars at home.
A small island of relative peace amidst a sea of turbulent battles.

There were the busy bees,
With their AP classes and extracurriculars,
Not popular but not ostracized, either.

There were the ones who flitted between,
The social butterflies who somehow maintained the graces of all the above,
Few and far between,
But easy to talk to and unassuming,
The kind of people everyone likes.

There were the bullies, too.
The ones insecure in themselves,
Feasting on,
Reveling in,
Dependent upon,
The weaknesses of others.

All these and so many more.

We saw them all--

A brilliant camouflage of people and personalities and habits of life,
Some by choice,
Others not.

And like Plath's fig tree,
Which we'd read about in English class last week,
They all seemed so appealing,
In some way or another.

Maybe I wanted their smarts,
Or their popularity,
Or their anonymity,
Or their struggles,
Or their personality,
Or their strength,
Or their courage..

I didn't really know.

But I did know that,
Like the fig tree,
I would choose one,
And the others would die off,
Forgotten.

But for now,
There they were,
An enticing dinner menu with altogether too many options.

And here we stood,
In the hallowed halls of high school,
The world ours for the taking,

And such an addicting collection of lifestyles in front of us.

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?

i'm not what you might call a holocaust denier,
it happened, the end. what i am saying
is found on a song, slayer's angel of death
from the album reign in blood...
the modern media speak of the migrant crisis,
you see it on the news, leaving the Libyan
coast, in inflatable boats, a dead child on Greece's
coast... you can just sense the desperation,
but also the daring, and the ***-starved
European women who took less a chance
for *** holidays in Ivory Coast, or whereever
it is they do their ***** business...
i don't know how they did it, the Germans,
but they did, they were rearing cattle
into those gas chambers, it's not even funny,
i'm not laughing, i'm just astouded by
the comparison, this blind belief in a god
to bail them out, and then watching
the desperate *****-like daring of the modern-day
migrants from africa into europe...
ah, the funny bit... Brussels, chocolate,
magnets... choc from Africa, choc-talk from
Belgium... am i surprised?
   as said, according to the dodo project.

i too thought that when the band *reef
released their greatest hits album,
with a new song, give me your love,
that they could rekindle their long gone career...
i thought it was their mangum opus,
just over 3 minutes long, still... what a song...
it could do much better on the radio frequencies
than their standard place your hands,
give me your love is like a virus,
it's a contagious anthem to what could have
been, but never was,
i'm sure that, if the radio people appreciated it
as much as i did (when i still played the guitar,
but later smashed it for reason that are worth
noting my ex-girlfriend and how her dad
initially made it hardly dead, but slightly disabled,
let's just say he gave her an extra sound hole;
****** hollowed her out! completely!)...
   and yes, i want writing to be as fickle,
as painting an "abstract", so i'll adopt blitzkrieg
to writing, strobe lighting, quick change of pace,
the whole disco shabang...
       what, can't i imitate women by writing as
finicky as is humanely possible?
    let's do that... i have all day...
well... i can officially say it's the 20th of February
and winter has ended...
   it's getting warmer, yuck, and i'm getting more
daylight than i like to have had...
  speak to the scandinavians about winter
and misery, or the "blues", they'll tell you that
in winter, they couldn't be happier, or should i say:
cosy... cuddling pillows and lighting scented candles
in their wooden shacks...
for care of all that *******, that's true.
      i was thinking Alaska, or Siberia, somewhere
really really remote, so i can be like
that cat i own looking at my *******
so that i look away when it's taking a **** in the garden...
oh sorry, i'll just return to my cigarette and beer
breakfast... take your time...
         what an annoying little twit she can be...
and with "can be", is...
      just after philosophy attacked poetry,
suddenly someone said, enough! that's when poetry
attacked the medium of journalism...
   someone has to bully someone in the end,
   or as i like to call it: symbiosis vulgaris...
it usually takes the monday edition of a newspaper,
and then re-reading the magzines from the sunday
edition... how those ponces critique books,
but i like critics, they actually read books,
which makes less time to think about books and bricks
and vacuums... critic: mmm hastings...
book? reporting war, by rrrr mosely... (trill that,
trill that *****)...
    it's basically about Patton bitchslapping an exhausted
soldier... and how Montgomery and 1944 and
Arnhem, and how he should have been sacked for that...
but primarily about how journalists lied...
    some shot down fighter jets,
some even did a Hemingway and added a bit
of spice, a chilli romance or something of that sort...
i add more spices to my curry when i make one,
e.g. cardamom... try thinking i'm a ****-asian
and not blame me for ultimate war and commerce...
oh wait... Caucasian... the caucus...
or let's call her: Matka Caucasus...
modernity, see, you have to start looking for myths,
myth-making is the only worthy rebellion
  to be made when everything is speeding past you
at 100 miles per hour... and it's still only Monday...
by Friday we can say: conquered the moon
and killed of Brother Grimm...
      and yes, in ancient times,
i'd give 30 years of pure, pure, pure life for this
advanced modern ******* of shrivelling away
at 100... give me 30 years of pure, raw, oyster-slurping
life and i'm your man...
   give me a life, that's actually a library and
the next time i sit before a television, i'll turn into
a little ****** and start utilising a gun and shooting
a mountain... a bit like Xerxes
          and his army told to whip the seas
into submission... akin to any madman,
the comedy just never seems to end...
                   it just goes on and on and then, at some point
we reach the pinnacle, the everyday grey,
common people... and then it becomes truly sad,
the realisation that we're all apparently prisoners
entombed by cosmic forces... i'd like people to try
to laugh then...
     but we are living in times of relative peace, aren't we?
it's not like we decided to enforce an "article 50"
(more like article 22, catch)
and are sending men to war,
                only when the mechanisms of war have become
so advanced that the wars we currently see
are puny... they don't capture the imagination,
what with the nation being so abstract it's
only basis is for football supporters and nothing else...
not the type of man i could have been in 1939...
   even when my grandfather and father lived
in a nation that prescribed no university after
leaving school, but 3 years in the army...
   where my jealosy stems from...
   3 years comprehensive in the army...
     it's that lesson of teaching man: routine...
my routine went when i went to university,
even though i did have 9 am lectures, and it was chemistry
and in my third year i was doing over 30 hours
in lab and lecture hall...
          but when i look at my father's and my grandfather's
life, i'm just thinking about an england,
where army conscription was dogma...
                ****'s sake, ted berrigan did it!
and he was a poet!
               me? more or less a *****... a tier higher above
a gimp... but i'll just call myself chewing gum
and mule it over...
                  try not having a joke at the existential
lottery known as life...
                          but it's like: who to fight?
    we done fighting, we're faking fighting? we're
not really fighting, are we?
      so, about this book, and how journalists and with
due care for establishing that there were censors
in the interim years 1939 - 45...
             and how wars are waged as much with
guns and knives as with truths and lies...
      well... if at war... tell a load of lies...
if at peace?
                 you have to tell the most mundane truths
unimaginable... truths can't be imagined,
e.g. i wrote this quasi-constipated, that's quasi for:
i kept it in and made an effort, and had some *****...
of peace and for peace to endure:
you have to be blunt... you can't *******,
well, i call bullshiting a diarrhea of narrative,
in the meantime i'm also capturing the sunset,
i started this, whenever i did and now i'm desperate
for a lightbulb...
      but really, for truth and for peace,
for both these children to have a father,
          they need to hear the uttermost banal:
a banana is yellow, white is the refractor of light,
black is the insulator of light... goths and emos
wear black cloths but have an aristocratic complex
meaning they have a vitmanin d deficiency
and i could milk them with my pinky.

We are the Forgotten, the Outcasts
We are the many
We are the strong
We are the bullied, the teased
We are the ones you left in the dirt
We are the ones you cared nothing of
We are the ones you laughed at
We are the Emos, the Goths, the Scene Kids, the Nerds
We are the weird ones, the Metal Heads
We are the ones who aren't the football or cheer-leading star

We are not the alone
we are not the unloved
We are a family
We are the faithful ones
We are the proud ones
We are the happily different ones
We are *The Happily Forgotten

Homeless guy
sits begging for change
where the streets
don't care for your name
lugging about
all he owns
home
a rough patch of turf
down by the docks

His plight ignored
shunned by those
that walk by with wrinkled nose
save the few
that flick him the odd coin

Guys got to eat
and the cold cobbled stones
ain't no solace
for a warm bed and a roof over head

As the emos and goths
passed me by
congregating by the flying v guitar
the hippies sat drumming
in a circle
singing
lets give peace a chance

As homeless guy
heads to Greggs
a hot drink
and a feed
the sun is setting
on the streets of Newcastle

just i

     opening

            my soul
                          
                     oD
                        and
          drawtuo
                        fumbles
                emos
                        unbright
ecnecsednacni
                             some
                                       fuckhot

                                                    magic
                                                                 peeling
                                                                                out
                                                                                        the innumerable
                                                                                                                      jeer
                                                                                                                             of my
                                                                                                                                         and me
                                                                                                                                                        deepest

We're called the freaks,
The ones society points out,
We are the emos, the shy, the awkward, the nerds, the transgenders,
The gays and the lesbians,
To name but a few.
We aren't freaks.
We're unique!
Compared to their cookie cutter demeanor.
We make the world go 'round.
We created the formula for gravity.
We make the best music.
A normal person is limited by society.
We are free!
To express ourselves however we feel to.
So "freak,"
Is nothing to fear!
Embrace who you are!
Follow your own values!
Make something out of yourself!
And let the world judge!
Because in the end,
The only opinions that matter
Are yours (and God's)...

Okay emos....
Today is that time of the year....

Killjoys, Make some noise.
Never be afraid to keep on living.
Never be afraid to walk this world alone.
We'll carry on.
So long and goodnight.

i don't speak an acquired language that's not native to me: i lay havoc to it; and that's for making fun of my father's accent, while under-appreciating his roofing skills, that most of these "caribbean" sloths couldn't handle, let alone these precious office princes, ponces, princesses, whatever you want to call the envelope-lickers: to me they're just as handy as those orangutan window-lickers, pile of toilet paper A, through to pile of toilet paper B.

deutsche pluralismus: german pluralism
arrived on these shores in
the 1930s, with heidegger stressor
of *sein - and the copernican reinvention
of here & there,
and the to & from, muddle within
the anglophone pronoun pro-nun
debacle... james not a josephine antics
of grammatical usurpation...
yes thank you, now write me everything
you write, backwards, e.g.:
                         god eta tihs,
& emos tac doof retfa...
            i tune autism thinking about
the optics of this construction...

quote (from the 1930s:
and this entrenchment is again only
the consequence of the concealed abandonment
of beings by being (beyng archaic german,
ergo sein, german in english stressor);

but this is the 1930s!
        german idealism of the kantian era died
a long time ago,
what was spawned was german pluralism,
god, this new venture by the kafkas of
this world is so abhorrent that it can only
invite islam into a politic that's simply:
identitarian, rather than authoritarian...

i love the fact that i can retract the pompousness
of my argument with a bouquet
of words gravitating towards slander,
but germany has reached such a zenith
as i already stated,
namely? german idealism died a labouring
death, culminating mid-20th century
on grounds of exhaustion by the olympic flame
guardian...
  and? enter german pluralism...
  via heidegger addressing being
via beings, and a "there"...
                   can hier / here, be revised
into yiddish (jewish german) within the framework
of a simple ha? hasien?
   might as well ask: haitian to boot?
germans make the worst tourists,
they stick out from a crowd like
a matchstick among toothpicks...
the english are loud & proud,
and that means: so obvious to the point
of annoyance, having spotted one.
i mean, i'd love to go back to german idealism,
rather than settle for the current
german pluralism...
   but as russia has a subverter shadow
hanging over it (stalin was a georgian) -
so too germany with a subverter shadow
hanging over it (****** was an austrian).

among the many isms, this might make sense,
to actually peer into a mirror,
and be able to recognise oneself.

I've been listening to La Luna by Belinda Carlisle on repeat for days now. I guess there's nothing particularly odd about daydreaming to intimate love songs. But I feel as though the fantasies I imagine in my head aren't quite the ones the song intended to convey.

Sea salt hair, the sand kissed skin – I can see that.
The cobblestone pathways of small Mediterranean back alleys. Lover's fingers intertwine as they lead each other to the quiet seclusion where is it just them and the moonlight. - It's all clear in my mind.

I think the immersion falls flat when my fantasy involves two lovers who looked like the overgrown emos you see on your tiktok front page. Bright coloured hair, **** cuts, mullets, piercings, the My Chemical Romance t-shirt, cuffed jeans and scuffed up converse. A sense of ****** and binary ambiguity, I do not know who they are. But they're all I can think about.

Yeah, the immersion is definitely broken.
And I, am definitely gay.
G-A-Y. The word almost feels like a jumpscare every time it comes to the forefront of my mind.
So I keep repeating it over and over to try desensitise myself but it never works. The thought fills me with dread, an overwhelming sense of shame and fear. And yet, I still keep listening to that song.
I prefer to call myself Queer for a better term of use.
Queer with a Q that feels like a tender kiss when the word leaves your lips.

Whether I wanted it or not over the past year the walls of heteronormativity began to gradually shatter and I felt as though I was shattering along with it. To see the world through Queer-tinted lenses. It's a beautiful yet overwhelming experience.

To be free? Should feel liberating, but I just feel lost and exposed. A part of myself wishes I'd have had this realisation at 14, 15, 16 even. Anything but 24. I feel a sense of grief for all the life I have wasted, every date I've sat through with straight men who truly believed they were Guts from Berserk, yet their words dripped with the blatant misogyny they were trying so desperately to keep inside.

'Crazy ex girlfriend' I've been her, I've heard of her over 100 times. And yet all of these men are still hung up over her? I find it fascinating that they cant see it's inside themselves they need to look. I guess I still hold a sense of resentment for all the years I spent mothering men who wanted nothing but my body, when my body would recoil at the sight of theirs.

It's not that I'm not attracted to men. I am. In fact my preference is for masculinity, but the difference between masculinity and  the standard straight man is stark.
The standard straight man takes: takes your body, takes your worth, your sanity, your words.
You are perceived but never seen.

There is a softness, a sense of humility within the Queer heart. A silent, unspoken acceptance for whoever you are. Some scream it loudly, for others it's just the small smiles exchanged between each other when you know you both feel comfortable in each others presence. Because you are seen and you are safe.

Safe. A word I am yearning for.
I've not felt it in years now.
Love, A word I am yearning for.
I've not felt it in years now either.

La Luna, whoever you may be. I'm excited to meet you one day.