"exceptionalism" poems
i given nothing
i abandoned
i adopted
i dropout
i garage
i Apple
i NeXT
i Pixar
i Apple
i pilfered i
i invented i
i produced i
i market i
i retail i
i am i
i am
i
i tech beauty
i consumer fetish
i whom you love
i sleekest widgets
i Toy Story
i Macintosh
i macbook
i Lisa
iTunes
iPod
iPhone
iPad
i more
i rebel
i genius
i visionary
i entrepreneur
i world changer
i exceptionalism
i capital market hero
i bigger then business
i cool capitalism
i myth
i "the man"
i worker
i employer
i boss
i thief
i savior
i billionaire
i venerated
i vanity
i Buddhist
i prophet
i redeemed
i 1 in 300 million
i America
i sing the pathos
i am the creed
i define the ethos
i Steve Jobs
i amassed riches
i accolade crowned
i ingratiate world
i virtue
i success
i creativity
i favored
i Midas
i bedeviled
i tested
i afflicted
i retire
i human
i mortal
i succumb
i eulogized
i leave legacy of i
i am an MBA case study
i employed workers
i peddled intrepid product cycles
i subject of amusing anecdotes
i am heroic corporate folklore
i grew pods full of music
i incite kids to thumb phones
i captivate consumer imagination
i built rock solid balance sheet
i erected toxic Chinese factories
i enriched investors
i am the cool corporate brand
i inspired a million unused i apps
i hipster capitalism
i imposed my will
i insisted
i am that i am
i cannot take it with me
i leave blue jeans
i leave NB sneakers
i leave black collarless shirt
i will be asked what
i did with the time
i was given?
i did the best i could
i played the hand dealt
i parlayed it into a royal flush
i filled it up with i
i ask why
i am no more?
i leave the world
i am no more
Godspeed Beloved
Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs
(February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011)
jbm
Oakland
10/6/11
Nov 4, 2011
Nov 4, 2011 at 10:40 PM UTC
For it is written to grant forgiveness
No matter difference or malfeasance
To never speak ill of one another
Or deny each other our subsistence
All men are created equal parchment
Holding these truths to be self-evident
The oppression of the Kings colony
Patriotic revolutionary
Migrating minds irrational to sane
Reserved safe harbor but to others pain
Land of self-righteousness and victory
Exceptionalism and destiny
Ships billowing with holds of chattel slaves
Fractional human beings ordained graves
Until brother killed brother for freedom
Assassination emancipation
Forty acres and a mule recompense
Jim Crow separate but equal pretense
Lynch mob street justice terrorism rope
Vietnam veteran unable to cope
James Earl Ray bullet Memphis balcony
Bull Connor another dead Kennedy
Black power fist raised Mexico City
Malcolm X panther Muhammed Ali
White supremacy freedom riders dead
Mississippi white cross on fire dread
Rodney King can’t we just get along plea
Is skin color all we will ever see?
Should they get over their Mockingbird past
Should they burn the city or should they fast?
Oh Lord should we turn a cheek in silence
Or fight with Kings dream of non-violence?
Nov 25, 2014
Nov 25, 2014 at 10:39 PM UTC
early morning
and the same sun rises over distant lands
and close-by skyscrapers
searing rusting infrastructure
with its harsh orange glow
spreading westward,
stretching over asphalt pathways
that connect, divide, structure, and destroy
alighting wearied faces of automobile drivers
careening through their morning commutes,
consuming caffeine like *******
while they deftly maneuver their 2,000 pounds of steel behind,
along, aside, and ahead of their neighbors
this,
is New Jersey,
where all roads lead to Newark
and there is nothing left but roads
approaching the colossus,
the cars cram and crawl into curb-side cases
narrowly avoiding calamitous collisions and condescending traffic cops
doors, fly open
and a mad flurry of arms and legs,
boxes and backpacks
come whirl-winding out onto the entryway
rushed goodbyes and abrupt adieus
color the palette of the doorway
dripping inside,
bleeding into the harshness of late businessmen
and screaming families.
Shoes Off.
Laptops Out.
and pray dearly that the TSA
doesn't shove their fingers inside of you
today.
arms up, legs spread
exposed to the imperceptible energy of American exceptionalism
the magnetic arm swings,
impregnating its subjects with the Joy of Fear
and the awe of empire
swings again,
and releases the hapless passenger from its total control
Through.
Checked.
Complete.
Pass Go, collect $200.
and into the international installation itself.
Enjoy your flight.
Jan 8, 2014
Jan 8, 2014 at 12:36 PM UTC
Some dreams are significant
Some dreams are just fantasies
Some dreams are useless
Some dreams are idiotic
Dreams can make you unique
Dreams can be your drive
Dreams can help you develop a vision
Dreams can make you a dynamic person
We all dream so you are not unique
You can sing and you dream to be star,
You are smart and you dream to work at Microsoft,
You have access to money and want to open another Google,
guess what???
You are not unique.
You must resist and transform structures
You must claim responsibility
You must produce knowledge
You must move through space and cause disruptions
You must affect people by induction
If you become normal then you don't exist
To exist there must be exceptionalism
The normal have no history
The normal have no memory
You are nothing...
Apr 9, 2016
Apr 9, 2016 at 12:07 AM UTC
The empire has fallen.
Olympus is on bent knee.
Stars and stripes are no longer stunning.
They are littered among the ashes of American exceptionalism.
This country was to aspire to higher ideals.
Our marble columns were not to be built on the backs of injustice.
These shores were meant to welcome the little guy in us all.
Now, they are littered among the the ashes of American excpetionalism.
Falling back to earth, this place is nothing special.
Patriots stand idle.
The name of the country is being dragged through the mud.
Dirtied by the ashes of American exceptionalism.
We are the devils we always feared.
The ones we swore to protect the world from.
Now, darkened souls torment our government's door.
Riddled by the ashes of American exceptionalism.
Is there hope? Can there be change?
Can we see the error of our ways?
Is this ship too far off course?
Are we guided by half mast American exceptionalism?
Mar 10, 2014
Mar 10, 2014 at 10:36 PM UTC
You stood in the limelight
before a shaft of blazing luminescence
emitted from the zenith positioned
matrix of all energy
The brightness illuminated your
radiant countenance
as blackness enveloped around your
structures as in a early baroque
by Rembrandt
Your form was made from the finest
materials
But your representatives stood in defiance going beyond
their eroded gardens and
trampled vegetation and beast
underfoot; even defecated plutonium
in my backyard
and belched various gases in my face
Luxury is still your ideology;
all to sure in obtaining
unlimited resources
You are still heavily consuming
the best
still maintaining the frivolous notion
that all is well
never anticipating
that time passes into the future
The shaft of blazing sunlight
has insidiously been replaced
by a blinding interrogation lamp
as darkness licks at your morals
and creeps upon your very being
small cracks are now being discovered upon your once lovely face
No longer can you obtain desirous
riches as readily
as options become minimized,
while playing and bullying a winning serious game of monopoly
against poor countries
Panic is beginning to take hold
as reality overcomes frivolity
You are starting to run,
you have already left one of your golden combat boots
in Vietnam; later pirated black gold
from Mesopotamia
under perjury and severed our nation with the fascistic sword of xenophobia,
and plundered the spirits, at home, and other innocent minorities unjustly
And nationalised yourself from a continent to an island regressing
into itself; homogenized into exceptionalism and the nervous propagandized
gnashing of Caucasian teeth
But doubtless to say
there is no reason
for a prince to save you
because you have gotten too old,
much too corporatised,
too corrupted, too soon, too fast,
YOU MUST SAVE YOURSELF!!
And I know you can
And I know you can
be that lady with that beacon torch of hope...once...again
And whence comes the nourishment of love that flourishes once more...
Jan 3, 2016
Jan 3, 2016 at 6:58 PM UTC
You have to start somewhere
You have to start somehow
At rock bottom
You cannot go down
Just do something
Forget the pressure to be successful
This fake exceptionalism you see on social media
Meaningless influencers and food for ego
Listen to your intuition and forget the noise
The bird that tweets the loudest is not the most productive
You just need to be the one with the strongest wings
Resilience is key
Feb 13, 2019
Feb 13, 2019 at 7:29 AM UTC
.
An Inside Job ?!?!?!
**** !!!
(
)
(
)
(
\/
/\
/ \
%%#%%
****** !!
%%
( as the buildings turned
To Swiss Cheese
& fell down ... down ....... Down ! )
^
when I was a kid
I loved
GOD AND COUNTRY
now that I am an adult
I still love
GOD AND COUNTRY
But it ain't the false god of war and greed
And
EXCEPTIONALISM
as worshipped now
And it sure as hell ain't
This Immoral Catastrophe now called
AMERIKKKA !!!
)?(
are YE - all smelling
What I be stepping in ?
My fellow poets
And other
Fornicating entities
Floating around here
On the borderlands
Of
INSANITY
&
MASS DELUSION !?
//
Yeah
Let's face it
9//11
WAS
an Inside Job
!!
( &'none of them Rich Celebs
Really loves ya
BUT I DO ! )
Oct 24, 2015
Oct 24, 2015 at 6:58 PM UTC
We step away and then,
you close the door
(you always knew how to close)
The palm of your hand (I)
shut(s) my eyes
and I imagine you must be thinking
that my head is spinning
only, it’s not.
I’m tired this time around
and all that we’ve had,
in cups, in pantomimes,
in black bottles at the back
of your grandfather’s closet,
is beginning to weigh me down.
I am an anchor
lightly kissing
the bottom of an abyss
in a sea.
But you don’t swim
and I know you never will.
No, my head isn’t spinning,
but the world is.
Before, I thought it ceased
to halt when I found myself
alone with you
in that enclosure
I craved from the back
of my throat.
I was possessive of your presence
without good reason.
Never had any good reason
and here again, I’m without it
but I no longer allow myself
the delusion of believing
in the immortal exceptionalism
that I once painted
on your face.
The auto-intoxication has stopped.
We step away and you engage
my mouth once more.
It has never been the way
I’ve wanted.
I gave you permission
and you close the door.
(I am now closing my eyes).
I was blind
now I ignore
the way this body
has never been more
than a robust instrument.
I use it as such.
You dismiss my thoughts,
that is your mistake.
Your hand on the back of my neck,
pulling down to devour.
We always speak of ***
as in hunting terms.
A predator hunts his prey.
The prey traps her meal.
But I no longer resist
and I admit that violence
no longer shines.
It is nothing and makes
for one hell of a drowsy exchange.
You disrobe me,
these mechanics are boring.
The choreography of two
relative strangers (I hardly know
you in the end, we don’t talk)
moving their bodies in
a badly needed rhythm.
Pure imagination.
We dance for the other
without listening
and you step on my toes.
I crave the scratching halt of the song.
Your tongue is metallic.
This has been ugly since day one.
I shut my eyes, my head not spinning,
and its only now that I see.
I no longer wish to force
stimulation through the filter of my body.
You shut the door
and I shut out the world.
Mar 30, 2014
Mar 30, 2014 at 10:28 AM UTC
“I'll find them"
I say as I come across another corpse
The blood leaking out of the open wounds inflicted upon them.
Turning their intellect into a poison
that eats them inside out.
They're gone now (blanched from existence),
I look around
And see the bones on which
My “exceptionalism” stands.
Unnoticed by most
but I sense their ghosts in the spaces that should be filled.
The same system that killed my kin,
demands I cannibalize them
to sell me as a relic - a reminder of what was
But I never forget - or forgive - a murderer.
May 25, 2025
May 25, 2025 at 7:02 AM UTC
Can a nation forgive?
Or must everyone die?
Which generation
Will walk a grudge by?
Did the Jews forgive?
Did Nagasaki forget?
How can the heart become
What the mind won’t let?
Did Jesus speak to you
Or to a nation?
Did he command the soul
Or write a Constitution?
Where exceptionalism is assumed
With a mandate from God
A people destroy the ground
Where holiness did trod
It is written
An eye for an eye
But is this for Caesar
Or for you and I?
It is written
Turn the other cheek
But is this for a superpower
Or only for the weak?
Why do we cheer
The death of a man
When God’s own son
Gave us a plan?
Or did he?
Can no man believe
That which his brother
Failed to conceive?
You abdicate your wishes
Behind a closed curtain
Believing in the good
Your vote always certain
The republic gathers its sons
And its daughters
But the outcome is decided
They’ve parted the waters
The collective never yields
The individual a myth
Ancient documents pretend
What rights do you walk with?
As the national interest swells
Our destiny is manifest
The chosen many
March East and West
Civilizing savages
Extracting resources
Stealing fruit from peasants
Mitigating encumbrances
The walls pushed further out
As we play in the yard
We pray before commerce
While someone stands guard
I call for our memory
Of a man in untouchable clothing
And for the son of slaves
To bring peaceful reckoning
Beaten down over and over
Suffering the indignities of a lifetime
Laying down before charging horses
To show us power’s crime
What is the seed of change?
An atomic bomb?
A protest march?
Or a Psalm?
What have you been told?
What have you witnessed?
A miracle has occurred
And yet you are calloused
I speak to you now
As you show me your smile
Will each eye seeks its mate?
Or will you walk the first mile?
And then the next
As it was spoken
But not for Caesar
For he will never be broken
Will you walk
And accept your mandate?
Will you give another man your coat
Or will you hesitate?
Can a nation forgive?
Can you or I?
Can a newborn baby?
Or will you teach it an eye for an eye?
Feb 11, 2015
Feb 11, 2015 at 10:28 AM UTC
The Admiral Who Tells the Youth of America to Make Up Their Beds
One is pleased to note that an admiral
A brave example of American exceptionalism
Who commands emails and fleets and his resume’
Possesses the skill to make up his bed
Give him another shiny medal for that
That should keep him amused and out of your way
A sailor and a monk must make their beds
At Reveille and Matins, dutifully
Subject to obedience under oath
For tidying up is a liturgical act
Each act in its own small way leading to
That one great Way of God’s eternal love
But if you’re not a sailor or a monk
You may well be blessed with a lover to kiss
A dog to pet, a child to love, a cup
Of coffee to be embraced passionately
Make celebrating the dawn with indolence
Your oath of obedience to needful things
Mussed pillows are fine for laying down your head
So
Disobey the admiral – don‘t make up your bed.
Jan 21, 2017
Jan 21, 2017 at 8:25 AM UTC
Psyche soaking wet with devout atheism,
this lifetime skeptic now tenuously
linkedin with Unitarianism
attests, said upbringing proffered,
mine credo, gestalt,
leitmotif, sans abstractionism
eludes elucidation, delineation, clarification...
some readers might
dismiss as absurdism
defying established dogma fixed absolutism
millenniums, would be hashtagged heretical,
and such cavalier blithe
apostasy, declared alarmism,
now - twenty first century
extant accursed as alcoholism
within various non
Western statecraft enclaves,
barely tolerating agnosticism
no fool to *********
proclamations antithetical opinionism
where condemnation to death
(I obediently, humbly, and gladly accept)
inadequate punishment,
cited on par relegated to alienism,
amoralism, antiestablishmentarianism...
never does this anachronism
loosely cabled with pioneerism,
(when ****** forests bedecked America),
a veritable wilderness, necessitated
quintessential self survivalism
knowhow long since forgot,
which dependence on consumerism
finds yours truly afflicted against capitalism
commercialism, conformism, cultism et cetera
more aligned with reliance on individualism
nearly an extinct species,
where anti materialism
betrays, cavils, and discourages ecocentrism,
versus profit motive maximization,
though of late environmental dynamism
aggressive representative thank you
Greta Ernman Thunberg regarding criticism,
nee opprobrious global ecological terrorism
mandating staunch defeatism
as stave bulwark
against criminal determinism
to wreak irrevocable traitorous dogmatism
predicated on tenets of egocentrism
brewed, steeped, and
galvanized in exceptionalism
of **** sapiens and expansionism
exclusive to said primate
that requires serious assessment,
asper bracketing craven
doctrinairism edified fundamentalism
granting humans unfettered expansionism!
Mar 23, 2019
Mar 23, 2019 at 3:52 PM UTC
Deeper scars I deliberately left to the strangeness. faint romantic notions suddenly cosmatted in my soul when I felt it was all over! Surprised, dumbfounded, I looked wordlessly around: what could I do with the life I had left?! The **** of my hangman's days had been pushed down by calculating old age. On my face yawned the cellular yawn of perpetual weariness, while the majority outside could not know it was all a sham!
Cheerful expressions, grimace-inducing holy smiles seemed to be paint that could be applied many times: secret disguises masks that could only harden with time! - There in there: in the depths of a child's foolish soul, conjurable spirit-beings stir and nestle. I run along parallel pairs of rails running back into myself, and I cannot play recklessly and carelessly when the chessboard of Existence calls: there all goes sharp!
For I have always thought of foreseeable evil, And digested it like a boiling caldron. My troubled soul constantly wanted to throw out its upset waves; an inner umbilical cord was much needed, which would lead through secret, invisible corridors boldly into the mysteries of the other body. Listening, like the vigilantly curious, till Life calls at last, and may not pass through the magic circle. A fine snare, a deceptive trap. The imprint of our lives infected with exceptionalism; the truths of honest eyes should be relearned and spoken!
In our slow castle-circles the bliss of another-self is ever waiting, And the membrane-thin instincts of touch are vulnerable to further wounding by conscious love-lust!
Feb 27, 2022
Feb 27, 2022 at 1:28 AM UTC
people
people
people
people
**** people
and their dreams
of white fences
and tidy suits
and red convertibles
**** that life
oh the profanity
the profanity!
you serious *******
do I terrify?
I’m watching
all natural disasters at once
melting all together
morphing into
this human race
american exceptionalism!
I’m dead
in my boots
walking across
the shriveled streets
of rolling cornfields
of the past’s future
of the optimism
the ******* optimism
that is nothing but words
that is nothing but hope
we can’t eat hope
we can’t drink hope
time to starve
and pretend
that we’re
changing
when we never
moved
in the first place
May 4, 2015
May 4, 2015 at 10:46 AM UTC
The banter runs in squares. Hot air
condensing stories on the things you like,
inquiring where they’re from? A lush
entanglement of architectures
pulled from hungry jaws, unsated,
set to gnashing blindfully
at light, like worms?
Rejoice in proper terms!
Renounce those shameless fights
with others and yourself, best soldiers for
this no doubt war
appealing to the combat tribes
to both consider lives
and shoot them from the fences.
Ampleness, bedecked in hero standard,
tacks our motto to his brim -
“Why Can’t You Be Like Him?”
A just extolment of desire
(trod lightly otherwise),
steps to our eagle-eyes.
We’re living.
Pry the fenders off the lies
that carted us to chaos
heedless what it spurned -
what gardens have we watered?
Labors that upturned the noses
of the rulers bidding silence in their undertow -
what power, then, to stir below.
Sep 1, 2018
Sep 1, 2018 at 1:51 PM UTC
From the torn stillness of nights it rips with a thunder, A capricious edge, a wide tear of memory's storms! Rust-resistant, twisted honey-coloured pitch bubbles, While from the distance some forlorn desert of stone Seems to rise and rise in search! Purple Sisyphean rocks teach patience, and mature silence for themselves, To prophet-wise, and to those who pass through themselves!
Sunyin yet ***** the end-shadow of the red-skinned skeleton-sidereptile, declaring war on the screeching flocks of ravens! Let the well-known, acute or even trivialised lies begin: the obligatory, preaching holy commandment of saving lives, and unworthy, reengineered echo-songs that the mouldy plaster on the walls of our health care system is getting more and more rotten, and the cracks in the wards are growing! - We can only rarely count on the kind attention of our mortal, and therefore evolving, brother states!
A swarm of pigeons, falling from low heights, splashes over our heads, and some would sell the final product for sweets, if it were all that could be gained by the deliberate explosion of sound they themselves create, to enliven their wealth, the truth they have dripped is clogged up! The proliferation of idiotic, idiotic exceptionalism in a self-expanding space is incomprehensible; idiotic constructions should be replaced by stable and balanced production instead of the brainlessness of oligarchs!
Caravan routes often **** in the lost man if he is not careful! Self-righteously, who can still dare to swing stubbornly confidently in people's tin-can ring cannot remain in his honesty!
Jan 23, 2022
Jan 23, 2022 at 1:35 AM UTC