I want to crack open my skull
with my black pen
wedge it open
and have a look inside

I would poke around in there
touch the worms
that crawl through the gum
the slippery grey slime
I want to **** the
black beetles that join them

I would pull the thoughts
the twisted strings wrapped
so tight around the lumps
I want to loosen their hold
if for just one night

And taking out my brain
holding it carefully in two cupped palms
I would rinse it off in the sink
the mud flowing down my hands
the dust of fatigue
mixed with mucus
sliding down my wrists
and the bugs twisting around my fingers

And I would put it back
gently settle my brain
down into the yellow soup
cleaner now
and I would sew my head back up
and flatten down my hair
wipe away the blood

and go back to sleep

at high noon
at a small college near the beach
sober
the sweat running down my arms
a spot of sweat on the table
I flatten it with my finger
blood money blood money
my god they must think I love this like the others
but it's for bread and beer and rent
blood money
I'm tense lousy feel bad
poor people I'm failing I'm failing
a woman gets up
walks out
slams the door
a ***** poem
somebody told me not to read ***** poems
here
it's too late.
my eyes can't see some lines
I read it
out-
desperate trembling
lousy
they can't hear my voice
and I say,
I quit, that's it, I'm
finished.
and later in my room
there's scotch and beer:
the blood of a coward.
this then
will be my destiny:
scrabbling for pennies in tiny dark halls
reading poems I have long since beome tired
of.
and I used to think
that men who drove buses
or cleaned out latrines
or murdered men in alleys were
fools.

We all have wounds in our hearts that have been stitched up with loose, flaky sutures.  At any given moment, someone may touch your wound and it can open up.

Our reaction is to recoil in pain and then lash out.  

What would happen if we were able to have enough focus and self-control to think first before we react?  We might not burn so many bridges, we might save marriages and friendships.  We might be happier in the long run.

Wishing to **** the person who hurt us so deeply feels totally justifiable and appropriate in the moment, except once the emotions flatten, saying those hurtful things, acting that malicious way is only turned back on you and hurts you with the pangs of loss and regret.  How we so wish we could undo it all and go back and do it right this time...

We must remember that we can react on the inside, but that we have the power to conduct our external actions in loving ways.  We are humans.  We will not be able to do this every time with grace, but we can do our best.

What propels our ability to be non-reactive is to acknowledge the incredible skill of putting yourself in the others' place and wondering what they're going through.  What is she feeling?  Why might he say those things?  And then responding with compassion. Self-restraint coupled with empathy is the way we do this.

I believe most of us (like 95%) of humans of the Earth are truly doing the best we can with what we've learned in life and what concrete things we have to work with.  The person who is selfish or violent may have had convoluted messages and abusive parents while growing up.  Any one born into her situation would probably behave the same.  But on the outside, when all we see is the selfishness and violence, we judge her.  We gossip and say she's a bad person.  But, if we really saw and experienced all of what she experienced, we might not be so quick to judge.  In fact, we might reach out with loving arms and compassionate hearts.  I believe people are good.

I greatly struggle with being reactive.  I make sweeping assumptions, believe these assumptions, plan an attack and then attack head-on.  I've lost over four close, wonderful friends this way.  I've lost numerous relationships.  I've almost lost family.  It's time I grow up and learn some self-regulating skills.  I am finally starting to see how I regularly sabotage my relationships.  I'm like a bullet-train racing down the tracks and my collision is waiting for me every time.  How does one reverse the direction of a bullet-train in motion?  I do not know, but I feel it is my duty to figure that out and do it.

I think the first step is to think.  I feel, I stop, I think, and I think some more, and THEN I take action.  The trick is to STOP first so that there's time to think!  

That's my personal therapy session for tonight. :-)  Good night.

Maybe we thought we were ironic.

Poor kids

throwing money on train tracks

to watch it flatten,

lose all value.

Sick kids

driving too fast and too far.

Tired kids

staying out too late.

Kids.

Talking through the hard parts.

The bad bits.

The most painful days.

We lived them all.

We were kids.

if I told you
the "F" marked on my
birth certificate wasn't me
would you tell me how wrong
I am?
how I'm too young
to know or think something
like that?
if I told you I'd rather
flatten my chest
deepen my voice
shorten my hair
be called something
you think I'm not
how would that turn out?
I hope one day
I can tell you how I feel
without the fear or proof that
to you
I wouldn't be a child
playing dress up

I flatten my father’s tin foil hat to hear farmland again.  I don’t have what I have.  I am the astronaut god commands me to pinch.  my babies are tossed in the general direction of trampolines.  my eyes are male and impossibly warring.  I am trying to talk to you as a child who was read to.  I have seen only the future my parents memorized.  I can see her nodding off at the controls of my sleep chamber.

Flatten the Earth. Peel the orange
into a butterfly
Octahedral symmetry guarantees it

****, Euclid assumed
How can we be sure of anything anymore?
If we question the fundamental postulates
Do social norms work as postulates?

We assume X, therefore X is true
Cease your baseless premise
Stop the assumption
Deconstruct and be free

Yet we can never be free
Liberation is what we crave
A liberation from power
from language
from truth
from meaning
and yet it chases us down

That ****** me up.
That thing you said.
And then you left me
all sticky
Your slimy words in my head.

It worked.
Mission accomplished.
I am indeed
A self fulfilling prophecy.

Why is that
Heavy things flatten me out.
And when im smooshed
You can flutter about.

buzzing and landing,
         not demanding,
any attention at all,
            on the wall
rather be not visible,
life can be miserable,
       things can go boom
   while I'm in the room,
      if someone tries to flatten my face
stand back and just give me my place
                    on the wall
                    on the wall
                     that is all
I want,
is to hang out,
and hang off,
near the air as it
floats by, with treasured
                        aromas
                        to be tasted
                        at my leisure,
                        unless one of them
                        goes into a seizure
                        and begins to beat
                         space and time,
            some surreal pantomime,
missing me
strike one two three
           why are they not out?
Errol Flynn they are not,
caped crusader,
or
Darth Vader,
hero and villain,
in pursuit of a fly,
my oh my, such moves, such grace
all to flatten my face against a wall,
I am so glad, with such a mess, I was small.



©DWE012014

Today, sitting in the library waiting for it to be time to go to work, I've decided that its a good time to write about some things that I've been keeping to myself for a while. Victor Frankl has convinced me to live as if I've done it already and now can make good on my promises and make different choices than the last go round (which was one helluva doosie). I should be looking for a house instead, or maybe hunting for that second job I need to take. But what's the difference between one house or another, or even a cardboard box out by the mall if there's no eventual destination one has in mind. So I'm going to write down my dream for the future, a wholesome dream I keep very close because its so real to me. There are other dreams of course, other lives I'm tempted to seek and have tried in the past to actualize, mostly out of a desire to escape, to be somebody else. But this dream is the real one, the true one that is all the more precious because it can belong only to me, whereas sailing the high seas or tramping through unexplored jungles could belong to anybody with a mind to do it. My dream has more to do with minor things, things that don't take herculean courage or a doctorate in linguistics. Things like taking the kids out for ice cream on a hot day. Or piling everybody into the car for the drive from our house in Floyd up to Woodstock for the Shenandoah County Fair. Singing all the old songs and some of the new as we wind our way through the Blueridge. Maybe somebody has a summer cold so Charlotte and I have to hunt for tissues in all the places where they might be, and then find them in the back with the kids where we put them in the first place. And then finally getting there, late probably, so that everybody else is already at the grounds and we can hear the announcer at the cart races as we unpack the car. And then there they all are, my Mother and Stepfather, Uncle and Aunt and Cousins and the Grand Parents deciding to come again this year, though its getting hard for them to make the drive from Virginia Beach. So we all head up to the track to catch the last of that days races, covered in sweat and bumping into random people, a four-year old perched on my shoulders, not just because it's fun for him but also so Charlotte and I can keep track of the other children easier. I can see the magic in their faces as we waddle around the pavilions full of animals for the livestock auctions. Our six year-old daughter gravely points out to her mother that there's something wrong with that turkey in the pen, it's the wrong color. She has only ever seen the wild turkey's around our place, never a domestic white. Charlotte shoots a quick smile at me, trying hard not to laugh as she explains to our daughter why not all turkey's are as pretty as the ones that live near our house. And then before ya know it the sun's going down and it's almost time for the live music to start. So we all wind up in the bleachers again, listening to old country singers whose songs I haven't heard in thirty years, sharing funnel cakes and singing along while I'm wiping powdered sugar off of little noses with my shirt. I could go further, talk about how we decided to keep heading North after the fair, up on to Skyline Drive and Front Royal, and visited the old Firestation where my Great-Grandfather volunteered in the days before there was a McDonald's. But I won't flatten things with too many details. They're not that important sometimes anyway.  What is important, is that when I see these things in my mind's eye, they're clear as if they've already happened. As if I'm remembering the night at the fair with my Family last summer, and writing about it now after I'm done grading papers and the children are getting ready for bed. There's splashing and laughing from a bathroom where it sounds like there's less bathing and more tickling going on, Charlotte laughing hardest of all. I write of this, and I know deep down inside, that I've found something I lost a long, long time ago. As if a lost civilization's Golden Age is sailing out of the mists, building's putting themselves back together and beautiful trees growing right before my eyes. I've got to go now though, I need to help Charlotte dry off the kids and then show the youngest how to make the best PB&J; sandwich ever, the same way my Dad taught me.

I search for my dreams inside cabinets
I open them one by one
And rummage through
Plates, table cloths, knives, and bowls
Trying to find the one
That only my sister it holds

On this dream I lay heavily
Until I flatten it with the weight
Of my concern
This particular dream
picked me up by my feet
And slammed me onto the asphalt
Repeatedly
Until my tears for it conjured up a canal
And I floated down it with my sisters bowl
Until this gap wasn't a hole.

Yawn… Through the early morning stars.
The glimmer catches my smile as I exhale the night.
I sigh and release the long, dark hours,
And look up to watch the sky ignite.

The warmth ****** the chill on my cheeks,
And dries the dew on my drowsy lips.
I unravel my limbs and flatten my peaks,
Letting the Dawn kindle my flesh with golden drips.

The grass just waking up reaches beneath me.
The leaves whistle sweetly to the trees.
I take a breath of sunshine,
And feel the world around me buzzing.

Finally, I can say
“Good morning.”

How dare you love me, without worry or doubt
Put me on the spot, praise me with your songs
I can't live up to your starshine and glittery expectations
I will surely fall from your pedastool and flatten my image

Let me stumble, crumble-be wrong, I do that so well
You have no idea where I come from, or what I can be
How I cry in the night or lash out at the ones who love me
The stains on my soul leave little room for others

Don't offer your earnest goodness, smelling of truth
Of sweet ginger and citrus when you hold me close
I deny my chemical reaction to your touch, I don't want it
The air between us crackles as you tell me you love me

It's not something I know how to return, I will hurt you
Rendering yourself vulnerable so I will learn to trust
But I will fall and fracture myself-revealing my imperfections
And you will be shamed in my wake

Lilacs sweeten the night although I'm sure to break your heart
Your lips tasting of mint and your arms snaked around my waist
I try to tell myself you're safe, even if I fall-I won't be alone
But I defeat myself, leaving you alone and your scent lingering

i have
many flaws
this i
have always
known i
snap my
gum i
eat too
much my
accent is
far too
heavy for
this midwestern
town and
i stand
too close
to the
street while
waiting for
the light
to change

today i
waited in
the bus
lane and
didn't realize
until the
girl beside
me screamed
as the
bus sped
past inches
from my
face i

guess i
forgot that
not everyone
wants to
cease existing
so badly
they subconsciously
hope for
a bus
to flatten
them on
their commute

i don't want to flatten you out
put you on a frame in the hall of fame
where people would go just to gawk and stare at you
that would be so cruel of me, because you-
you
are so much more complex than that
you are the foundation of a house
something everyone takes for granted because they cant see it
how many times have you slipped out unnoticed
by those looking for the shiniest, brightest stars in the world
if you look for those
you miss the planets
you miss the way that you sleep with a shirt over your head to "block out the light" so you can sleep better
you miss the ridiculous, pleasurable conversations
"did you know that Louie Armstrong would cut off the callouses on his lips with a pocket knife?"
"we should write a comic strip about a starch that smokes **** and call it "The Baked Potato."'

let's keep away from the photographers, the paparazzi, the artists, the writers

you hate attention anyway
said you would rather "sleep on the roof for a week" than give a presentation in public

i have discovered you
but i won't ever tell

the books will not mention you
there will be no statues of us
but the ones we build with sugar cubes on the privacy of our own kitchen table
where messes like us can be swept away and kept in no other place than our memories
and the storage on my phone

i will memorize the lines on your torso and back
but children will never study you in geography, they will never be asked the year you were born or at what latitude and longitude your chest muscles meet your abdominals

a search on Google will pull nothing about you

you remain undiscovered
to all
but me.

What if
everything got all crunched together?
We’d go deaf from all the noise
blind from all the light
our organs would burst and flatten against each other
everything condensed
into one small round ball
and the only ones to survive
(not even the ants, for they are too delicate)
would be the tiny little atoms in the air

All of our atoms, floating around
like pure elements,
unbroken
unfazed
by all the diseases of the world
the disasters
the heat
the freeze and the condensation
everything that has ever wrecked
and ravaged our earth
and the world would begin anew.

What if
in every breath you take you’re inhaling everything else that has ever existed?
the rough dirt patches on the surface of the earth,
the ozone,
the warm UV rays,
the cheese that has broken off of the moon?

What if
the blood of Adam and Eve
is in your glass of orange juice?
or
the prehistoric stony eyes of a dinosaur
hides in your pup's timid glare?

And what if
every water molecule contains every
feces that has ever existed
and has been swept inside of you?

rainbow fish with the most beautiful teeth
swimming in circles around my head
******* breath out of my lungs
so suddenly that I sob my mothers name
and even the name of the god that I do not know
before the darkness of the lack of oxygen leaves me in a daze
and floating on the floor in a pool of my own sweat
clear like diamond tears from a dragon who lost its fire

whose only intent is to **** me father down into the shadows
as cold as the belly of a glacier
where I can finally catch a clear glimpse of my own soul
battered and tarnished and stained
i wish somebody could save me from this
fish seemingly beautiful but full of hate and
I don’t know where the hate came from
it suddenly rose in me at
first like a gentle drizzle and then became a tidal wave
that will flatten anything and all that wanders into its way
I don’t even know if I am capable of love anymore
will the monsters leave
wont they go

I need to shrink like alice
and go far away from this life that others have built for me
I am rapunzel in her tower I am trapped
but I cut off my own hair in a fit of self hate
and now have no way to escape
the only thing I can do is wait
but how am I supposed to change when I am locked away
in my own mind and nobody can come in
and nobody can help
and I don't know how to save myself

(someone won this collection via a Goodreads giveaway and posted how much they hated it on Tumblr because Tumblr is not attached to their name.  also, I assume, because they hated it.  my name is Barton Smock.  I, too, am a coward.)

~

[earshot]

you were a white male and I was a white male and we were young and even if one put us together we were young.  our idea was to give winter gloves to those whose teeth chattered and we knew the sound had come to us both.  we mowed lawns all summer and mugged a drunk **** who sat reading love notes after baling hay.  we bought the gloves and held them until winter but by then we were not friends and song was the retroactive vocal of a father’s forgetting.  we divvied the gloves in a sad scene no mother would countrify.  

~

[eulogy]

when stalking
the unmanned
spotlight
of your own
death, drink

heavily

with
your takers / you

are nowhere’s
only
sponsor

~

[not monstrous]

a group of boys beats my son for beating my daughter.  when I carry my kids, my kids relax.  the group of boys are uneducated and think god has promoted a number of them to shave me.  my ***** looks as if left by an angel to grow alone after not being placed on an infant.  there is nothing to be said but one of the boys mutters away that he is set to star in the film version of your father’s suicide and that if all goes well he’ll **** himself for real.

~

[tract]

the television in front of my murderous father is the city his house misses.  further coverage is dedicated to a new unharmed person from a race of desert people whose mother materialized without feeling.  as my brothers cross shadows in the brightness of kitchen, I join in spirit the manhunt for the victim who’s made off with the right to disappear.  

~

[incubation period]

I flatten my father’s tin foil hat to hear farmland again.  I am the astronaut god commands me to pinch.  my babies are tossed in the general direction of trampolines.  

~

[non-event]

I was reading beyond my years to childlike fathers in a house named for the woman whose hair was brought to her by boys her sons had wronged.  I was eating what I could of the horse said to have eaten hospital flowers.          
~

[locals]

the mother wonders how it is common she lose the baby when she is not the last to have it.  my name is silent but no letter in my name is or the letters in my name are not silent but the word they make is.  her pain is god’s.  

~

[monster]

I want to sit around and do nothing and I want to have a handful of kids that sit around and do nothing.  I will call myself the end of god and ask women inappropriate questions by way of populating obituaries with written code.  you will want to argue and I will have to get up and we will try together to save the child I crushed parts of.  the face of the child will be our slideshow.

~

[light touch]

she imagined herself pregnant.  she fell behind her best years which became predictions.  she asked me about the men in my friendships.  candle-makers, a few with toddlers

a football
knocks over.    

~

[straw piece]

I was an entire baby and then a picture of me as a baby.  I had as part of the **** shaming process a mother wheeled in and out of the sun.  here is a boy with a red brick looking for an anthill.  here he was brushing from a woman’s bare back a piece of straw and here it is sticking to my leg.  in the barn the eater of stones is missing the privacy of an outhouse.  I lie to her face and then to nostalgia’s outlook.  I lose blood to the mosquito known for the collapse of my favorite cow.

~

[insult stage]

the very sadness.  the very sadness of the intruder who brings his own plate to drop.  the very ecstasy of telling a classmate he or she is ugly alongside a finger he or she must choose.  the unintended ecstasy of the sadness I use to *** cobwebs while waiting for something you’ll do nothing with.  the cutting of the fingers to scale.

~

[stirrings]

being operated on
helps me sleep.

I was your age
when nothing
had been done.

the turtle in my father’s backpack,
the turtle loose
on a moving
school bus.

gods
from a previous
marriage.

I crawled into my mother’s bed
and waited
for my nose to bleed.

you find the cut
like you find
where your daughter
is cut.

a sister ties
knot after knot
and opens
a window
only to *****
in a downstairs bathroom
from a fear
of heights.

Synchronic simple step
be
yonder, yo, go, no
go, si, go
on and on and on
… so yust so
yust to be we once went

we split, full moiety,
each
ac-
act-
act-ion -jello-timed- lobes
blobs plasmoieted mind
parabolic, by yah,
Arching fly call it, I got it,
call his name, yah who done
did done GOT
caught
the funny parts. Read the books.
Now. At this point, cognitive native
child formed in my mortal moment
per-ifery-wasery rules
secret se- per seance
sacred made knowledge,
state of knowing entered, left

ab-rupturously, grief, lief
left easy, re lief, sigh
good
grief. We were all
we-    are Charlie Brown, forever

interrupted, as if once, however long ago,
we knew we were one thing,
then we knew we were merely

words between things you knew
and did not do.
and you know you imagined this is that.
The novel experience, this side.
Post-done and paid off.
Precautionary. Click.
Why not,
who is asking, hangs, as pregnant pause
über Þe olde excessive easing hook,

who are we, and what are we doing,
we who were to survive receiving
asked knowledge, the easy-does-it tree,
shows us the easy way, this way dis-eased.

The lie and the profundus is merely piercing.
Flatten the spikes, be atop the bed of nails.
Wait. Funda-mental, bottom mind, first
id-ego otherwise mind,
frame a being, be a
one, and not the other,
here, there, there, it's okeh, eh, ok?

E-see easing easy living, being been done,
doing all that old trees do, after all,
we wait to feel the fire beetles,
land and lay their eggs among our ash,
and swollen-cracked nuts,
fire calls them into heat, in season.
Such things we learned
from the ant people who saved us in reeds,
thatching from roofs floating, maybe,
really, lifeboats, but
think a tsunami through,
rush
incursive and excursive.
Lay down a layer of plausibility, evoke applause
clap each hand once.

Curtain.

I remember everything you tell me.
Every conversation, every joke, every compliment;
stuck there in my head with a staple gun
replaying forever.

It started the day we met.
I liked you then, too.
That was more than a year ago.
Time with you goes by so fast.

You are just a box of stupid cliches.
I scream and I scream
"Get out! Get out! Leave me alone!"
I kick and thrash and throw things.

Why don't you come sit with me?
Feel the pain that you
put me through.
Swallow your pride and look what you've done;
how you've broken me.

I wonder how much you know.
It hurts really bad.
Sometimes you bring me to tears.
Me!
Such a strong fearless little girl.

Nothing makes me cry.
I am the greatest war hero to ever live.
I've been through Hell,
and came back without a mark
But this thing is worse than that.

The worst of it all
is when you tell me pretty things
Meaningless, insignificant things
that drop on my head and flatten me to the ground.
It's wearing me out like nothing else.

I only hate to imagine
what it would be like without you.

Even though it hurts,
I'm glad you're still here.

i always seem to be sitting
in the middle of intersections
like a traffic light that hasn't
hung itself yet, always
seem to be waiting in the
middle of the ghost town
of where our love was first
built. there's a hospital
down the road where the
waiting room chairs are
much more morbid than
the hospital beds and
every electric heart rate
line sitting on the screen
of the heart monitors flatten,
make long beeping sounds
like an alarm clock, like a
wake up call; they make
long beeps like the ringing
i hear inside of the phone
when i call the owner of
the voice mail i've seem to
have made a home out of.
they took every place
we kissed and turned it into
a church that closes on
Sundays and holds a choir
full of people that lost their
voice in their own war. i've
been in the line for the
confessional for about two
years now because every
time i go up to say how
badly i want you to feel it
back, i let the girl wearing
your t-shirt cut in front of
me. the sidewalks only
seem to crack when they
remember how it felt
when you walked on them,
when you gave the ground
its purpose. one of these
nights the traffic lights will
come to their senses,
drop into the intersection
and crumble right next to me
because it's not like they have
anything to stop or at least
slow down because this is
a ghost town, & nothing is coming back.

This is where it starts;
my head resting on a cold floor
carpeted, but rough

the noise of a full kitchen
seeping in through the door
like the orange light from streetlamps
hitting a wet pavement

I can’t hear your voice
until it’s in my
ear

***** soaking your
tongue so that the
words sound thick
and heavy

slurred in a way
that makes my
brain flinch

now those words
are being force-fed
from your mouth
into mine

choking, lungs
filling up with
liquid letters

coughing, kicking
frantically

I’m drowning and
you know it

so I let my legs
straighten and
flatten

close my eyes
and try to feel the
scratching of the fabric
beneath my hair

I know that this is wrong, our bodies intertwined so;
But when my leg touches your leg,
And your leg touches my leg,
Even the sharpest strike of lightning could in no way
Ignite the fire that the friction of our skin creates.
Why must there be only twelve numbers on the clock?
For our time of now has been cut short, snipped by
The scissors of Fate, and only one thread remains to determine
If we shall ever meet again.

The tousled blanket and the pillow falling off the bed
Are the only remaining evidence of our existence;
Yet when I make the bed at dawn,
I will flatten the sheets,
I will straighten the pillows,
and I will bid you goodbye.
And as I sit here alone, the door locked until time persists,
I remember the volcanic essence of our nights together -
The way your touch sends shivers down my spine -
And the whiteness of your eyes coming at me from the darkness of your face.

Now that we have parted and the holy aura from our bodies gone,
My brain can only feel the chemicals left by your aroma.
Nothing remains but the memory of scorching breaths and sticky arms
As well as the feeling of your smooth bicep lying across my bare chest -
The story of two star-crossed lovers with a finale seemingly as tragic.

we sink when we lie
we flatten into
the bed, ourselves
how grotesquely,
i think, inhuman
(we too much resemble
our nothing
but guts and meat
splayed out
on a slab)
flattening, sinking
bitter
wine, sour in my
mouth, red stinging on my
arm, stinging the back of my
throat choking on
it
was supposed to make me feel
better
weeping
wine
i take my part as villain
and think
maybe we're not all
so evil
after all
ive been here before
on the other side

We have fallen in the dreams the ever-living
Breathe on the tarnished mirror of the world,
And then smooth out with ivory hands and sigh.
W.B. YEATS  

*     *     *     *     *     *

My soul looked down from a vague height, with Death,
As unremembering how I rose or why,
And saw a sad land, weak with sweats of dearth,
Gray, cratered like the moon with hollow woe,
And pitted with great pocks and scabs of plagues.


Across its beard, that horror of harsh wire,
There moved thin caterpillars, slowly uncoiled.
It seemed they pushed themselves to be as plugs
Of ditches, where they writhed and shrivelled, killed.


By them had slimy paths been trailed and scraped
Round myriad warts that might be little hills.


From gloom's last dregs these long-strung creatures crept,
And vanished out of dawn down hidden holes.


(And smell came up from those foul openings
As out of mouths, or deep wounds deepening.)


On dithering feet upgathered, more and more,
Brown strings, towards strings of gray, with bristling spines,
All migrants from green fields, intent on mire.


Those that were gray, of more abundant spawns,
Ramped on the rest and ate them and were eaten.


I saw their bitten backs curve, loop and straighten.
I watched those agonies curl, lift, and flatten.


Whereat, in terror what that sight might mean,
I reeled and shivered earthward like a feather.


And Death fell with me, like a deepening moan.


And He, picking a manner of worm, which half had hid
Its bruises in the earth, bur crawled no further,
Showed me its feet, the feet of many men,
And the fresh-severed head of it, my head

Open up a can of humans into bowl.
Add dashes of corruption and manipulation.
With a cup of the government, pour it slowly and discrete.
Dont forget to add money, taxes, high politics.
With a bag of bullets,
Drop about 20 deaths per minute.
You will need 2 tablespoons of police brutality, child abuse, ****.
3 cups of pollution and overcrowd toxic factories.
With spatula,
Flip over green gardens and wildlife.
Flatten it with concrete and buildings.
Chop up living creatures and get rid of any access fresh produce.
Add this to the chain of fast foods and overly priced merchandize.
While stirring, don't forget to add rigged votes.
Once mixed, bake in tanning bed till fake golden brown.
Make sure it isn't black.
Let it rise, but not plus size.
Take it out and stagger around it putting it on social media,
Retweeting, tagging, sharing, liking.
Let it cool then glaze it with conspiracy theories then you're done.
Enjoy America.