In your past, this past
they weren't valued
no one said they were members of the family
what walks on four legs and is furry and cute is only
to last as long as nature intended and then to be disposed of

Veal calves in crates, taken from mothers on the day of their birth
to make more milk for humans, horse slaughter for glue
and foi gras, ducks and geese locked in a vice grip of their cages
metal tubes rammed down their throats and force fed until a liver disease
develops, painful, but given no respite
and served as a delicacy and
fur coats from animals skinned alive right here in America
still when mink farms are outlawed in the Netherlands and  
two million dogs and cats skinned in China every year not to mention
other horrors and no one cared or looked their way because they are
only animals, and voiceless and helpless and no one cared to give them
a voice or advocacy
"that's why they're there, for our use, people still say" who profit from an industry
of suffering

And today, there are people who try to give them a voice and there are veterinarians who will try to help you with your member of the family, as he suffers, in his old age
a bag of fluids hangs from my exercise  bike, and intermixed with my medications
is the painkiller and anti-nausea pills for my dear old friend
whose pancreas is failing
and father, this is foreign to you
you pretend it is a crime
silence is the only thing connecting us now

I hope you enjoyed your last barrage of unkind words
I think you did. The saddest thing I've learned about people like you
is
you feel better after such an attack, to see me reeling, bleeding on the ground
and you feel better, calmer and purged.
A kind of misbegotten peace settles over you
an exploitive peace from another's tears and pain

And yes, father, there were no agencies to give a voice to children
when you were young
no CPS, to aid my nine year old ***** friend
as a code of silence enveloped her attacker
to protect him, the one who destroyed her

But today there is a small brigade of a modern kind of love
to give a voice, protection, soothing to the ones who can
only suffer at our hands and not protect themselves from
our wrath and exploitation

and it is a better world for that, father
for my furry pancreatic friend and for any other
nine year old **** victims here

Exclusively molded in the divine image
  or egos big enough to declare it so
A dangerous theory
  a disastrous belief system

Gardeners of Eden
  turned stewards of entropy
Superiority conquest of nature
  symbiotic balance forsaken
  
Jealous hoarders of spirituality,
  sentience, self-awareness, intelligence
The irrational glorification of reason
  despite a history of upheaval and war

Bullies on the playground of manifest destiny
  exploitive excess worshiped as progress
Arrogantly intoxicated on the dregs of Pandora's jar
  blindly stumbling toward self-destruction 

Welcome to the valley of the shadow of death
             Environmental Armageddon

They all look so young and lively and free on the Berkeley campus
walking and smiling and dancing swing and exercising and studying in internet
cafes and along the college walk there are clubs: pre-dental society,
women engineers, others, worn signs that stay out all year long in California and wear well
like the Clinton/Gore bumper sticker still visible and affixed to the stop sign off Telegraph and I wonder when there will be an avenue called "Internet"
And along the walls of Cafe Mediterraneum are highlights of the sixties, photographed by the dead owner of the place and there are still students studying and wierdos and old people reading books but there is no inspiration here anymore
From my generation, the eighties there are no pictures, and none from the seventies either and from the nineties and this decade has come and gone without notice on the walls
because youth by itself does not renew and innovate and the pressures of culture are too strong to re-invent and
it's not like there's nothing wrong, nothing that needs to be changed in our world today if anything things are worse
but now youth is only thinking about youth and buying low and selling high and there is no more idealism, no more desire to rectify anything, only to establish oneself as part of the middle class or above and have a house and 2.5 children
when the world is quickly being destroyed now just not by war, or an atomic bomb
that would be obvious because it would be loud and white and then there would be darkness and drops of rain and devestation
but I think I want to drop an intellectual bomb on these young people and tell them to wake up and try to change the world again and stop watching Reality TV and
do something that will help the world and put your picture on the wall of the Mediteraneum because you are trying to help the collective good and not just feather your own nest and not just worship the rich and exploitive entrepeneurs and try to emulate them as we were told to do in the eighties because that is just selfish meaninglessness that can't keep being replicated in this world, because it can't withstand it
our land and water can't withstand this lifestyle and the dollar store selling cutesie things made in China are coming from child labor and blood money and this dollar store is on Telegraph and no one cares or notices not even the young,
as slave labor continues to produce goods, just not here, where you can see it
and even if you care about animals, you can think of two million cats and dogs torchured and skinned alive for their fur in China and you , Berkeley are wearing it onn your fur trimmed coats
There is an eeries silence on Telegraph now where there should be the aliveness of debate and not just to get ahead, but to give a voice to the voiceless and alleviate the real and obvious suffering in the world
So youth, you are not so young and fresh you are a dissapointment
you are cowardly, pondering your own navel
and submissive and I expect more
THIS IS NOT ENOUGH
change is frightening, but it is
the only thing
that will save us

I was conceived on acid and whippets, the drugs a kaleidoscope of umbilical dreams.
I was conceived on bad luck and lust, from darkness and sexually exploitive childhood trauma.
I was conceived on teenage dreams and difficult childhoods, to black sheep children of 17.

I was raised on addiction and narcissism, a love bomb here and authoritarian abuse there.
I was raised on the chess long game, to lose a piece here means to win at the end.
I was raised on 2000s tv, Lorelei Gilmore my wish for a mother, Rory my idol.

I taught myself strength in building up a fantasy on the outside while my castle crumbled within.
I picked myself up by the tendrils of a lost childhood, by the whispers of good memories, by the hiding places I found in pages upon pages of someone else’s imagination.

And I let it all go at 28. To find peace. To start over. To build myself a new castle with no more haunted corners or echoes of pill bottles or smells of ***** and orange juice permeating the breaths of those who walk these sacred halls.
Rib cage cut open, heart destroyed and renewed, ancient umbilical nooses cut with teeth.

I will no longer fall victim to my mother’s circumstances or my father’s mistakes, I will never have the soul I’ve created look at me and ask himself if he is loved or safe.

I am cycle breaker,
I am generational karma’s worst ******* fear,
I am no longer frightened maiden,
I am fearsome mother.
I am new.

Sometimes,
I imagine I'm some
mourning starlet
who sings Lana Del Rey
at the club
every Saturday night.

A honeyed halo of stage light
tangles itself about
the curled labyrinth
of my hair,
sparkles gold against
my tearing irises.

My mouth parts
and the war cries begin.

In the moments that
the melody offers
my voice repose,
I pound shots to the beat
of the drummer's ramblings.

The crowd applauds
my tipsiness,
their hoots of praise
shaking at the depths
of my eardrums
like an intoxicated tambourine.

My neuroticism
fascinates these people,
I think.

Not in an
exploitive,
let's-glamourize-depression
kind of way,
but in an
it is a truth universally acknowledged
kind of way--in a
"*******, cuz I've been there too"
kind of way.

See,
within my little,
concocted fantasy
of stage light
and music
and *****,
the people don't judge me
the way they do
on the outside.

Here,
I am not
melodramatic or
overly sensitive or
disposable.

Here,
my war cries sound
a little less
like death and
a little more
like poetry.

Here,
they love me
in spite of the sadness.

Here,
we share a song--
here,
they sing with me.

There is a day when dreams are
Exiled, left to waste away --
The dry sands of tomorrow.
Magnificent dreams,
Too daring, ambitious, demanding,
Cast aside, in hopes that they’ll
Flourish on their own.
We’ll dream once more…
Tomorrow

There is a day when opportunities
Are swallowed by the tides,
And sink to fathomless trenches
Never to be seen again,
For there might be another one…
Tomorrow.

There is a day when unspoken words
With the potential to change a life sit
In one’s tongue, embittering over time,
Since someone else will speak them…
Tomorrow.

There is a day when the Earth will perish
By exploitive and negligent hands.
We were all aware of what was to come,
So let us amend our ways...
Tomorrow.

Somethings simply just cannot wait.
Perhaps tomorrow is a day too late.

I fumble my tongue to please my brain. To ensue the passion of hilarity for others through the shame I lack.

If you write, you write wrong. No, sorry, you write incorrectly... No still not the right writing.

The grammar you possess is lacking enthusiasm in construction and production.

You fumble words in a loose platonic, exploitive passion of hilted disappointment.

Grammar and creation grow as production does. One-to-one the tower grows on an even playing field of iron I-beams and the office on aluminum T shaped cubical walls.

I apologize profusely if this has been difficult to process. Let us consider this a difficult simulation of your current level on sentence structure, and comprehensive understanding.

Behind my apartment complex
is a small creek
dry most of the year and filled
with trash
it gurgles this time of year with
brown foamy water
the wash of industrial civilization
at first the smell is foul, but now
is merely murky and there is no
smell and a pleasing sound of water

I look for signs of coziness around me
and I notice steam rising from the laundry
room that is visible in the cold
like a chimney puffing comfy smoke
into the rainy air

And I think of you and I'm afraid
I thought of you in Walmart
My life--this is the real thing
there are no romantic castles, only
a wet shopping cart in a crowded exploitive store
As I passed by the packaged vegetables
and stared at the racks and racks of ugly clothes
I thought, I am in control

The fear wells up inside of me
fear of HIM.  That him who squashed me
who took over my mind
I think of all the books I read, as people pass
by with very important shopping to do and
a homeless man makes a decision about which milk to buy
and he smells horrible, like decay and wetness
and people resent him and I wish
there were no homeless people
I wish there was more caring and less brutality in our world.

The key is not to care about HIM until you know who he is
The key is to keep your distanced mind in judgement
And I must remember this key because I swear
no one will ever hurt me that much again.

I am a hidden creek, a pristine one, because I would
never hurt the natural world as we have
He cannot see it, or any other he, until
I know exactly who he is.

Masterful ownership, I am lost between cards, the green table, set and speckled, distracted by the colors and forgetful of the number, exploitive, love the spices, and aggressive, and tired of being bullied, fragrance chasers, chortling in remarks blase in cafe's I'm meager minded but with fortunate background, I am spoiled but somehow burst from the bubble, some sort of rodent stuck out of time, letting the chemicals do their work, like dousing a cheetah in kerosine, just most toxic and full of rage, spotted and dying, closer to living without restraint, devoid of taste, my fears overwhelm me, driving me, my own secufled