The gruff factory worker
in the coarse leather boots
and stained zubaz pants,
yelped with displeasure
when the tour guide of
the Pullman company town
revealed himself to be a
PhD candidate in English
during a Q-and-A.

He questioned his credentials,
dismissed him as overeducated,
as soft-palmed, not of his caste,
loudly declared that he was
just another bureaucrat in waiting.

"Institutions just exist to perpetuate
themselves; they don't care about
the people, just about keeping
themselves alive," he theatrically
confided to his friend,
wanting to make sure he heard him,
took note of his flagrant, raging skepticism.

"They got to pay the lawyers."

"All these institutions, they don't care about the workers."

We strode on, amid the shadowed reaches of the empty train car factory the owners long ago abandoned to the rustling prairie,
left to the wind and weeds and elements.

Drugs are ******* great man
Do another line
Or take a hit
Or take a sip of something
There’s enough available to us
That’s legal - or not
That freaking out is overkill

To those availing themselves
Of chewables or smokeables
Or pills or anything prescribed
By labcoat-wearing, overeducated
Pharmaceutical-reps
Masquerading as the answer
That you found yourself
By diving into forums on the web
Your doctor both agrees with
And now disavows

They can’t allow
This kind of undermining
Of the underpinning
Of their industry
And of what’s keeping people healthy

Even only as a byproduct
Of confirmation bias
They cannot acknowledge
If we want to be respected
In this new environment

In which our personal experience
Is more true than the objective
Information taught to more than like
One million doctors

Starved glutton
Hopeful pessimist
Cognizant ignoramus
Overeducated fool
I am a roiling sea of paradoxes

☆
against the ugly light of a brand new
day. we
take comfort in the bruises on our
future bellies
.
my youthquake comes to a theater near
you  
in whitebreakers of overeducated hooves blustering forward without pleasure

and.in recycled boyhoods bandaged together in
peanutbutterhaste

i can_


.
advocate for me on your sly plunge into
Helios
swanlike and stumbling.

solution is
calling


i am unmaker of your radiotheist fire.


wrapt  up in your eternal parka like fishing net for rare creatures.blushing


it brings peace as i eradicate all sense of fashion.pulling on the uneven strings of the hood like a
God
for better people (than you)

i discount you in this poem and amid other things where
1 1 7 55 47 40 30 10
.


i crack open the cocoons you retreat
to
for
respite
like a
pre-dinner platter.washing my hands
in the crumbs
of your
falling cornmeal
bones.

(as)you
get caught
in the depression left  in my wallet when i
get up

to walk away

trembling-
fabulous as
bowie
's
ghost


doing you the most glorious harm.

I was sitting at the corner of hope and wishful thinking when she turned to me and said: “lets face it, there’s a good chance that you will be overeducated and working at Starbucks one day.” I said *******, puked, and took a long hard pull of the whiskey before driving off into the sunset.