our culture preaches self obsession:
to always be looking at ourselves,
to always be editing, editing, editing,
photoshopping away our scars to look pretty
on a computer screen,
to be focused continuously inwardly,
focused on our own flaws.
our culture preaches self obsession
but not self love.

the things we are born into,
the things we grow into,
people tell us they're not good enough
somehow. there is such a narrow
margin for error. there is such a narrow
road to walk if we want to be thought beautiful.

it took me 16 years to understand
that I was not worthless: I hated
myself for all the things other people
told me I was:
fat because my ribcage didn't
shine through my skin
a ***** for my opinions
a ****, and ugly, because of my body,
because of my face.
is it any wonder
I was so uncomfortable in my own skin?

in the past they told you: love your neighbor
as you love yourself,
but we need a new mantra.
think of the most beautiful person you know
and treat yourself that way.
would you let them starve themselves,
would you let them cut away at their own skin,
would you let them wallow
in self pity, in regret, in fear?
think of the most beautiful person you know
and then understand, that person is you
to someone else.
you are so beautiful.
love yourself.
love yourself.

I saw you in the hallway,
With all of your friends,
And everything around me moved in slow motion,
The girls think I'm crazy,
I kinda agree,
But it's hard to be cool enough whenever you look at me,

And I can be immature when I'm lying on the floor,
Photoshopping us together like I'm all yours.
But you just learned my name,
And I think that's kinda wack,
Have you seen my sweet shoes and my new backpack yet?

Somebody tell you why this hurts so bad,
Why can't I find someone like my dad, (I love you dad)

Why can't you just see what I see,
When you say I'm just a friend, you tell me I'm just friend,
I think I could make you happy,
But you say I'm just a friend,
So I'll be that
But I don't wanna be just that,

You probably think I'm too young to feel this way,
To you I'm a crush that just won't go away,
So even if you move on and have a happy life,
I promise I will pray for you, 'cause I'll be doing fine,

See I can try to be mature like nothing's really wrong,
But you probably know I'm faking by the time you see this
And I don't mind saying how I feel, as long as I stay true and keep it real,

Somebody tell you why love takes so long,
I think I'll just watch Reba with my mom (yeah)

Why can't you just see what I see,
When you say I'm just a friend, you tell me I'm just friend,
I think I could make you happy,
But you say I'm just a friend..

i’ve been photoshopping old memories in attempts to bring back color to over-faded, twice-forgotten black-and-whites
tried dodge and burn but that’s too close to what happened
you dodged so i burned like a stack of photographs and albums in a house fire started by christmas lights
maybe if i crop myself out you’ll turn bright again
until your whole face washes out and i can feel like you’re a stranger again
replace all your blues with harsh reds and sharpen all of my blurred edges
for a while things felt like polaroids,
instant results
but then i realized that i was just wasting film by taking one photo per roll at a time
i was ruining prints of thirty five other potential moments
we were never digital
but we were only ever digitalized,
conversations only spent on snapchat and half-second smiles in hallways
i’ll layer all of our photographs
because we sure as hell never had layers then
your smile is the same in every single one of them, but my expression is always off and my eyes are never quite the same level of jaded
somewhere along the line i’ve realized that no photographic evidence was ever taken of our life
i’m just looking at bad sketches with too many filters
i don’t even remember the sound of your voice
i’m writing poetry about strangers again,
people who have never existed outside of my head
maybe that’s just a bad coping mechanism, pretending that you’re just pretend
but i’ve been struggling with hallucinations lately
because photographs and light and sound is so **** easy to bend into whatever shapes you want memories to take
i haven’t trusted myself for three years now and i’m not about to start
overconfidence leads to the edges of cliffs
and i’m all too familiar with the steep drop of the ravine
when did photographs of you become a foreign language to me?
when did i stop recognizing either of us? why can’t i look myself in the eye anymore?
photoshop steals the life from my laptop battery
and reminiscing on things that may or may not have actually happened steals energy from me
so i’ll try to see if we can forcefully power down this crooked old machine
unplug me
i don’t want these memories saved anymore
delete everything
delete everything
unplug me
delete me
delete me

a month's worth of a hiatus
and:
no luck...
   i try to remember whatever
presence in the comment
section...
  there was never any...
                how to stage a:
     dialectical experiment...
    none to my liking...
   will the fringe reading
the Dada movement
    of scraps of works of
arthur cravan, jacques rigaut,
julien torma or jacques vache
help?
         to be honest...
listening to the fringe band
like percival schuttenbach
will not help either...
  how the **** did i find
wooden shjips' album V
in the Romford HMV
on vinyl: i will never know...
last time i heard:
there were only 3 HMV shops
left in London - metropolitan
& outer...
       Doug Putman:
you're on mate...
    seriously...
     a music store used to be:
a culture of...
  well... talk to someone
in a shop that only sells
  mobile phones, or trainers?
back in the day:
you'd be hoping for
a coffee: and all that culture
of the busy bodies...
             can i get the counter:
that buying vinyl looks
less sad, "out-of-tune"
  than buying CD?
i had to ******* move into
the realm of the vinyl:
to kick myself out of the house...
i don't like this prison,
of everything being:
delivered to my front-door...
well: i will always look less
like a loser or a sad bore...
if i buy for a medium
without head-phones...
   that i take care of:
no the gramaphone is not
a car...
   but, ooh, a crisp vinyl
for the 20th century of
the late 70s...
something else...
big news throughout the week
though...
what news?
i'm trying to figure what
the news was...
i haven't heard the world
since,
  it cried something
for about two weeks,
   and i was like:
   and if that sort of propensity
is to ever make me
reactionary...
outside the internet village?
it's a ******* village:
get over it...
people are congregating
in village-esque
            scrutiny:
whatever the numbers,
     but for people who've
never lived for a month
in a city no bigger than 60K
(60K is exaggeration
regarding the city i was born)...
the internet is no longer
a "world"...
  i.e. there's no da-sein worth
to it...
   there's only a da-...
imagine my glee when Heidegger
was cited in the 2017
film call me by your name...
i was like:
finally!
       the sort of nonsense
i understand! and when people
would rather:
or rather would rather not...
spend 2 years of their lives
reading sein und zeit...
    or as i like to call it: sein und "da"
      und nicht...
niemand, aber ein leib,
                         heulend:     ja!
it was either that, or:
listening to people exhaust the video...
one eventuality was
coming, one eventuality
disguised as an: inevitability...
because what is writing
as a compensation:
oh not the number of any sort
to count according to:
ego, prospect,
                  conundrum, eject...
sure, it's stale...
but serious literature would
never even dare to appreciate
these intricacies...
just today i picked up
the Sunday print...
yes... a physical copy
of the newspaper...
notable articles?

rankin: selfie harm -
instagram...
does anyone really want to see
my face in how i countered
acne?
      i just figured:
catch a fly on your face...
and say: Belzeebub took
a **** on your face,
embedded your skin:
and every time
you pinch an acne pore
from your face?
  maggots wriggle out...
now...
you don't a ******* h. p. lovecraft
to make a cthulthu counter:
i just did!
https://tinyurl.com/y9bbrtuc...
i'd have to be...
really ******* good at
photoshopping a ******* fly
on my forehead...
should have asked me
how much patience it took...
to "ask" the fly
to sit on me, while i moved
from my bedroom,
into the box room,
turned on my computer...
sat there,
   and took the photograph...
the metaphor for Belzeebub
sending one of his minions
i.e.: ******* onto my face
so that i'd pinch maggots from
it was already there...

yet a physical newspaper
it was...
headline news:
   the suicide generation...
in under 15s: 17 in 2013...
                              31 in 2017 (an 81% increase)...
15 -19: 170 in 2013...
                       207 in 2017...
       my age category?
i.e.: 30 - 63:
                            4,322 in 2013...
                   3,842 in 2017!
well: aren't i so, lucky lucky?

am i still drinking?
and when r. d. laing was not,
i was feigning to sleep
in my reading schedule...
any interesting news from
the newspaper on
a Sunday?

            just a week or so prior,
in the sunday times style magazine...
a dolly alderton
citing being an app-Onan...
    while for the past 10 years...
i don't really know what
a mobile phone looks like...
i hardly call it: hunched in a chair
over a keyboard,
with a whiskey handy
on the windowsill:
   screen time...
   you mean the erotica of
the 1st 5 minutes of a horror movie
soundtrack
when i lie in bed,
in pajamas (sleeping naked,
not good, not good...
pajamas are the way to go)
     having just turned off the lights,
and the opening-crescendo-choir
lullabies me to sleep?

- to be honest i'm ******* surprised
i've written this much,
given the sour news...
but this sort of news is...
hardly even accurate in my world...
i am tired of having
to invest in having opinions
that... i probably do not even have...
that's the beauty of
not caring for a "freedom of speech"...
i wouldn't like to have to prop
opinions...
   i might have them:
but as the fleeting of the day...
    i find it: actually hard to have
dogma...
             sure...
"freedom of speech":
   i already have that -
   when buying a pint of milk...
           i just find "freedom of speech"
to be a playground for
pseudo-dialectics these days...
           because: this is just pseudo-dialectics,
by the time a dialectical
moment happens,
the retort is prescripted, heavily edited,
and... there is absolutely nothing
of a friction, of coercion of
   the opinion, in argument,
toward a consolidation...
   what was a no-man's land to begin
with: is a no-man's land to the end...
     and if i fall prey to the lexicon of
the "culture war":
   i will simply have to re-state
my position...
    i am "manufacturing being:
                                       opinionated"...
and i do not have to even
     make a worthwhile concession
to...
           whatever opinion there is...

within the existence of the internet,
i've had one, yes, one
dialectical experience in my life...
on "foreign" soil:
yes, not with my dementia-ridden
grandfather:
   who's always prone to opinions...
on a bench,
with also an elder gentleman...
about...
    the delayed speech of his grandson...
and... about
rayleigh bicycles
and their cost...
     he supposed that his grandson
might be autistic...
    and might have to be medicated...
maybe: non verbatim...
i might have said:
   and no crushed pulp of
the vine is wine in the first
week of the fermentation process
having began...
whatever...

            an old man might say this...
but...
i have, no, contemporaries...
i don't have any...
primarily because:
i don't have a ******* video
camera and a mic.,
   just... itchy fingers and...
enough
     of a comfort to not have
to hear myself speak...
                 which: god forbid i will
ever do...
                  only blind-men
would bellow for
            a freedom of speech...
                    perhaps then i am
inclined to appeal to deaf
people...
          yes... all these conversational
overtones...
   borrowed, or rather expanding
from what was conversational
overtones in poetics
as instigated by frank o'hara...
        but hardly a real conversation
in what has become:
   a connected world
but also a congested
                replica of: the village life.

here's to my face,
becoming the new horror...
of the Instagram photoshopped
beauties...
   like the Cthulhu...
                i invite upon my face:
Belzeebub's ***!

p.s. oh... and there's only
something akin to
   da pacem domine (ensemble organum),
a templar chant
  in the background...

            a vision: less sinister,
and more... entombed
in a proud yet morose stupor.

Photoshopping?
why not hop in
get an access code
because somewhere
down the road
they
going to stop you
maybe even
pop one in you,

cop that.