By: Cedric McClester

When we come for you with pitchforks
And we finally hunt you down
For the pain that you’ve been causing
Cos your judgment is unsound
When we drag you through the streets
To tar and feather you
Maybe then you’ll understand
What you’ve put all of us through

When we come for you with pitchforks
Like they did back in the day
It will be small consolation
For the price you made us pay
See you’d go to any length
So that you can have your way
And it doesn’t matter what
Anybody has to say

When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks

When we come for you with pitchforks
Because we’ve become unhinged
And we’ve lost all rationality
Cos we’re hell-bent on revenge
The thought might then occur
That sadly you’re mistaken
But by then it’s much too late
For you to have awakened

When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks
When we come for you with pitchforks


Cedric McClester, Copyright (c) 2015.  All rights reserved.

(Yes, better than Harry Potter, get your pitchforks ready)

My first encounter with THG was approximately four years ago, when I had barely turned fourteen, did not consider myself bilingual and was romantically frustrated. Naturally, I made several mistakes at the time. First off, I read the series in translation, since I'm not a native English speaker, and missed out a huge chunk of the significance of the story. Then, as I said, I was romantically frustrated and thus paid such a monstrous amount of attention to the romance aspect of the story that I want to bitchslap myself. Finally, at fourteen, I was still ignorant and uneducated about so many things that I read the series, got hyped for perhaps six months or so, then forgot all about it, save for the occasional rewatch of the movies. In retrospect, this is probably one of the biggest mistakes I've ever made. Now, at the ripe old age of eighteen, a significantly better-read person, waaay more woke, as well as socially aware, I decided to finally read the series in the original and am finally able to put my thoughts together in a coherent, educated review of the series.

The Hunger Games has continuously been compared to a number of other books and series, occasionally put down as inferior and forgettable. In those past few years I managed to read a great part of the newly established young adult dystopian genre and am able to argue that A. The Hunger Games is undoubtedly universal and unrestricted to young adult audiences and that B. it is, without the slightest shade of uncertainty, the best series written in our generation.

While many people draw parallels between The Hunger Games and, say, Battle Royale, the similarities end with the first book, which, while spectacular in execution, seems unoriginal in its very idea. As the series unrolls, however, it is hardly possible to compare it to anything, save for, perhaps, Orwell's 1984. The social depiction and the severe criticism laid down in the very basis of the story are so brutally honest that it fails my understanding how the series was ever allowed to become this popular. What starts out as a story about a nightmarish post-Apocalyptic world works up to be revealed as a cleverly veiled portrayal of our own morally degraded and dilapidated society (if you're looking for proof, seek no further: as the series was turned into several blockbuster movies, public interest was primarily concerned with the supposed love triangle rather than the bitter truths concealed in the narrative). Class segregation, media manipulation, dysfunctional governments are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the realities that The Hunger Games so adroitly mimics. If I were to dissect, chapter by chapter, all three books, I'd probably find myself stiff with terror at the accuracy of the societal portrait drawn by Collins. I strongly advise those of you who haven't read the series between the lines to immediately do so because no matter how many attempts I make to point it out to you, you simply have to read the series with an alert sense of social justice to realize that it doesn't simply ring true, it shakes the ground with rock concert amplifiers true.

Other than the plot that unfolds into a civil war by the third book (the series deals so amazingly with trauma survival and with depicting the atrocities of war that I am still haunted by certain images), the characters of the story are what makes it all the more realistic. Though Hollywood has done a stunningly good job in masking the shocking reality of the fact that these are children - aged twelve through eighteen, innocent casualties paying for the adults' mistakes; children forced into prostitution, fake relationships, children forced into maneuvering through a world of corruption, media brain-washing and propaganda.

Consider Katniss. She is a person of color (olive-skinned, black-haired, gray -eyed, fight me if you will but she is not a white person), disabled (partially deaf, PTSD-sufferer, malnourished), falling somewhere in the gray spectrum both sexually and romantically. As far as representation goes, Katniss is one of the most diverse characters in literature, period. Consider Peeta, his prosthetic leg (which, together with Katniss's deafness, has been conveniently left out of the movies) and his mental trauma in the third book. Consider Annie's mental disability. Consider Beetie in his wheelchair. Consider all the people of color, as well as the fact that people in the Capitol seem to have neglected all sorts of gender stereotypes (e.g. all the men are wearing makeup). There is absolutely no doubt that the series is the most diverse piece of literature out there. Consider this: the typical roles are reversed and Peeta is the damsel in distress whereas Katniss does all the saving.

Furthermore, the alarming lack of religion (in a brutal society reliant on the slaughter of children God serves no purpose), as well as several other factors, such as the undisputed position of authority of President Snow, is suspiciously reminiscent of the already familiar model of a totalitarian society.

The Hunger Games, in other words, is revolutionary in its message, in its diversity, in the execution of its idea, in its universality. I mentioned Harry Potter in the subtitle. While this other series has played a vital role in the shaping of my character, it has gradually receded to the back line for several reasons, one of which is how problematic it actually is. This, though, is a problem for another day. (The Hunger Games is virtually unproblematic and while it may be argued that the LGBTQ society is underrepresented, a momentary counterargument is that *** has a role too insignificant in the general picture of the story to be necessary to be delved into this supposed problem). Where I was going with this is that, at the end of the day, Harry Potter, while largely enjoyed by adults and children alike, is a children's book and contains a moral code for children, it was devised to serve as a moral compass for the generation it was to bring up. The Hunger Games, on the other hand, requires you to already have a moral compass installed in order to understand its message. It is, as I already said, a straightforward critique of a dysfunctional society, aimed at those aware and intelligent enough to pick on it.

As for its aesthetic qualities, the series is written, ominously, in the present tense, tersely and concisely, yet at the same time in a particularly detailed and eloquent manner. It lacks the pretentious prose to which I am usually drawn, yet captivates precisely with the simplicity of its wording, which I believe is a deliberate choice, made so as to anchor the story to the mundane reality of the actual world that surrounds us.

That being said, I would like to sum up that The Hunger Games is, to my mind, perhaps the most successful portrayal of the world nowadays, a book series that should be read with an open mind and a keen sense of social awareness.

Grab your pitchforks run him outta town,
only because his skin is brown.
If he knocks on the door don't let him in,
only because he lacks white skin.
Punch his face with a bang and a whack
only because his skin is black.
Pull out your gun shoot him in the head,
only because he grows his dreads.
Lock him in jail for nothing bad,
call him a loser and a deadbeat dad.

If you don't think you've gone too far,
you're wrong, your soul's as black as coal tar.

.

Watching the rise and the fall of a kingdom
Walls once rebuilt again tumble the ground
Allowing the beasties free reign in the village
Bellowing out o’er the wickedest sound

Pacing the streets, seeking out bits of garbage
Leaving their stains on the innocent few
Leering in windows where children are hiding
Tender young things and so easy to chew

Thieves in the night lurk about come the morning
Stealing the sun at the break of the dawn
Drinking of sewage a’ flow in the gutters
Checking off names as the many are gone

Peering ‘round corners, down alleys, in shadows
Seeking the favor of all who do grieve
Laughing in spite of the torment now growing
Licking their lips in the hope you believe

Roaming in groups so the followed outnumber
Say what you will for the king does not hear
Lost in his throne made of mirrors that flatter
Shivering, cowering, caving to fear

Deaf to the villagers asking for reason
Blind to the pillage befalling this land
Dumb, well I guess that just goes without saying
Nary a care what the people demand

Feasting on turkey, potatoes and gravy
Raising a glass to the enemy proud
Taking a stand against those who support him
Locking the front doors while yelling aloud

“Carry your torches, your pitchforks, your honor
It matters not for this evil shall win
Even when gone there are echoes of anger
Lingering on till they come back again

Give them your all, what you’ve poured your heart into
Down on your knees, bow to them one and all
Step over rock and the piles of rubble
This castle will stand even when the walls fall

Shout all you like as no change is forthcoming
Accept it or flee, you think I give a ****
When you are gone many more will replace you
Now pass those peas and a slice of that ham”

So roam the beasties, their teeth ever sharpened
Fanning the flames as so many are burned
Tearing apart what the people envisioned
Silly to think that they somehow had learned

Nothing so happy with no ever after
Always the same, it will happen again
But unlike some other long winded stories
Sadly in this I can not say “the end”

Watching the rise and the fall of a kingdom
Walls once rebuilt again tumble the ground
Thankfully I can peruse from a distance
Witnessing all without hanging around

In a Somerville coffeeshop, waiting for his single origin light roasted Pour over,

Frankenstein reads a philosophy magezine, seductively planted by the lounging area.

"One lives two lives."
The magezine reads,  
"That which one spends in their physical body,
and that which begins the moment one leaves that body,
lasting until all witness to ones first life has spoken its final word".

The baristas eyes widen when he sees Frankenstein,
The barista says nothing.
He knows better than to raise the dead.
Frankenstein is often confused
for his monster.

Condensation rises between crocheted mittens, Frankenstein Lingers on the Cherry notes in his Coffee, while it combs icicles into his snow white mustache.

He likes this new version of an afterlife. It empowers him to take advantage of the time he has now, to make his second life last as long as possible.
He's in the middle of this thought
When his face slams against ***** snowbank.
Dog **** mixing into the icicles of his moustache.
A familiar mob of torches and pitchforks only see the monster.
They take turns kicking.
Kicking
Frankenstein wakes to a lynching.

When he lives
He is not a monster.

I look up and see this viscus dark, that covers our modern world.
What once was pure as Country heart, where the stars did seem unfurled.
Tis more the time in which we reside, than positions between the tides.

For simpler times with half a mind, or computers smarter than I?
Its so hard to decide, should we even choose sides?
We all lie within the sights.

From Darkened Knights to proxy bytes; Our combat hasn't changed much at all.
The monsters we created have simply updated; They'll soon have us ready to fall.

Our technologies lights seem to blur human rights.
Before you take up your arms or try to do harm; who is really there to fight?

On the way back all these thoughts poured,
Leaving me more opaque than when I left.
All the fears resurfaced with their horns and pitchforks...
No, I didn't tread through this tedious hell just to fail.

And then a voice said:

"Facing your demons, and the ones you thought you left behind, never was easy. You get scared and overwhelmed, but that's why you pray. "

...and that's why suddenly, we could all move again.

My family called me a demon
That my love is just a phase
They don't know what I'm feeling
And if they pray it'll go away

I'm a boy trapped in a woman
You're a woman trapped in a boy
When we cry every night til morning
They'll just call us paranoid

I will die someone other than myself
If I can't live the way I need to
I'm not a demon praying on someone else
I'm just a human-being like you

Someone fell in love with me on Sunday
And I fell in love with them too
We decided to get married on Monday
We're chasing dreams, old and brand new

Then one night, we opened the window
To see pitchforks and torches set afire
The pain is deep but little do they know
A few drops of rain can never put out desire

Bureaucrats and clergymen
differ only in doctrine.

But their altars steam
with the blood
of untold innocents.

The Pope, Stalin, and ******—
all canvass the people
with warped visions
of Paradise.

(Oh, Celan, you saw it
too well.)

Bloodletting for peace...

Pitchforks stoke the fires
to make dainty foot warmers
for Moloch and Midas.

In an unforgiving world
of naysayers
and backstabbers
and depraved liars
and false prayers
where
you have to look around you
before
you can dare to look ahead
in an unforgiving world
where the pitchforks are raised
at the slightest of mistakes
in this unforgiving world
I possess
a poison
far more potent
it's called love.
and darling,
you're not getting any.

Anger is content.
It took up residence but don't pay rent.
It's presence dwells here in horror.
Evil growls....roars & howls.
A horrid stench so foul.

Heaven don't save the ******.
Pitchforks are not an olive branch.
In hell you don't get another chance.

No harps or halos it angel wings.
Only screams angel voices don't sing.

Your forced to learn your lesson.
A game you lost & can never win.

Depths of hell echo & haunt.
Obscenities expose & flaunt.
Blood splatters on the wall.
Where he killed my hamster & threw him to his fall
Like scenes from a haunted house.
Tears your skirt, shirt, dress or blouse.

Dictate your fate in a bottomless pit to fall.

Clackling devil hooves across the floor of stone.
Hammers to crush & break every bone.
Skulls decorate cave walls.
Horned red skin with an evil grin stands 7 feet tall.
Death, destruction, torture & corruption.
Hell that is what's it's about & all.

Pitchforks stab & slice.
Evil does what is not nice.

Not flame retardant.
Hell fire burns is how it is meant.

His sadistic nature needs to die.
For making me & my sister cry.

This is not atrocity
This is the basement
This is the sea receding like lips to reveal tooth-like shells
  
Amongst the bullet casings and corpses felled leaving the boats
This is the sand like an inverted moat around the
Kingdom at sea, and this is the Remainder.
   Yet they remain jubilantly-

Is this what being jubilant means?
Chamomile anklets adorning a hanged child.

This is not atrocity,
Ignorance wielding pitchforks and fire.
Anger alight and hostility riled
This is not atrocity.
This is not far from this reality;
Remember this child-
  
And the mob piled like tinder on themselves
Convincing carrion feeders
And unimpeded breeders that
Halt the march of science that
This is not atrocity.

The certain hot song by which Earth is greeted
Has an immediately recognizable tune.
And
This is not atrocity;
It sounds more like ******, ******.

But I can't hear it
And I have no fear anymore
I open my eyes to another routine killing, and I know-
      
This is atrocity-

But a necessary one.
It's hardly enough to stay alive
And as I and we strive for
Money and coffee and love,
I and we let
atrocity
enter us.
Climb into us like a hand does a glove,
or a puppet.
It is not nature;
Nor fate;
And one needn't be dead
to appreciate the ability to open the senses
and actually sense.

And this,
I am certain,
   Is not an atrocity

The fires have razed the city
Pitchforks, picketers and angry mobs
Marching through rubble, the dust hasn't settled

The whispers ask so many questions
How? Why? What?
But this storm is done talking.
They shouted from the bottoms of hell
They shouted as every ear turned deaf
Words of peace, words of want, words of need
This fiery inferno is words of the unheard
The violent night of the voiceless has begun

The fires have razed the city
Pitchforks, picketers and angry mobs
Marching through rubble, the dust hasn't settled

Today bears the weight of erstwhile trepidation.
Uncertainties exhumed only to be hung up as ominous flags.
Black as night my widowed heart paraded through the procession.
Garbed in ash encrusted, sequinned frock, hemmed train all tattered in rags.

Herald the face with no features yet obscured behind a chiffon veil.
In hands, a bouquet of black roses, worm-eaten to the stems.
The mourning sun only gave the weakest glow,
feeble attempt to rejuvenate all that is stale;
to imbue the shimmer back into forsaken jewels and dulled gems.

Her entourage kept up with heavy feet; all grim and sullen.
Also faceless... Armed with pitchforks and torches.
Today they will draw much; having thirst for crimson.
Today they witness her death as the black parade marches.

I

Angry stupors succumb her sternum
                                          --battered cavities
                             and shoulder sockets.
   Mates with shotguns and pitchforks
           snapped femur bones holding to hope,
  cat nap toes struggling
                                            to climb the miserable

  The greatest beasts reverberate
                        --Fathom and Torrential/Alice & Skippy,
                                       & Orwell and Bukowski
   with pit mentality swarming
                            her literature
                            his neck.                   Never be the Republics.

     The wall is wood and bare. Ammonia wet seal--
              
            Alice, with her sweet, clawing voices sees
                          this escape is a prison.
        The dove sent to fetch Peace's growth
                  got stuck                                     in the chimney
                             that Skippy built with his stubbornness.

     Alice touches her tacked on remnants
                       --feeling the double home.
                                  Skippy stands still unless Alice calls
     for him
                  and he runs so fast with heart halves beating
                                                                ­       slow.

   *II

           Skippy looks down the abyss and sees Julius Caesar,
                    Cthulhu, and a black flag
     calling back for ceremony
                                 in honor of facilitating fear
                        holding tears
                                   and hugs with arms of falsehood.

    Providing bread for mothers and fathers,
            captors of our tables of silence.
       Fear--making dead witnesses into no soft music,

                                                         ­  no music.
                                                          ­       No,
                                                             ­  facilitators near the top.
                                              What the minds of men
                                                             ­                have done to him...

III

                            Wet paper skin,
                       flat screen canvases--cute satisfactions
                                  asked mean all the world
      but yet                                nothing              but petty questions
                                                       ­                              that break the camel's back.

   "Do I deserve to do this to you?" Skippy asks,
                  helping Alice remove her other lung.
   "Pages will tell babblers later
                           in history", Alice replies.                   Shrieking

    Skippy quarters Alice, the body, the organism's pillow
                    ink
                    oozes
        ­     and    
                             squirms.
Silence,
               as Skippy does the deed.
Wallowing
          back
into
           the
swamp
            of
obsessive
           perception,                        climatic disintergration
                                                 ­                   makes flint hit steel--making another heir
                                                            ­                                       in her litter. Her name is Pain.


IV

       Loving Alice
                           watches         as she falls,
                                                    crashe­s,
                                                and rises.
She smiles softly.


V


  softly with lips of jasmine, the butterfly conundrum is strapping
            fingers made of chalk and other media to
red bricks,
red bells,
it is but a ghost of a casket. She breathes in this casket--in the belly of a bell, she survives.

                                     It doesn't take her long
            to finish
                          what she has done
         --nails faded back to purple polish.

  Falling through her father's philosophy                         a ladder,
                                                         ­                                    a rope
                                         to strangle the blade of Lady Macbeth's sanity.
          Alice takes one last look
  under jasper eyelids--pulls the rope & becomes lactic.
                                                         ­              A motion film.

hello, executioner
hello starlight, hello pillager
make me a village
give me pitchforks give me haybales i will give you a show
brand new, glitter stuck shiny on the sign out front crying havoc
crying
"hello executioner lead me to the
slaughter"
you menace
isnt this a sight?
twenty-five love letters to a guillotine and a girl you killed
seven hundred years ago
advertising strategy number thirty-four: **** your neighbor
**** everyone you know and then **** yourself
are you jealous? are your eyes open?
i can hear your nose bleeding from here
(twenty-five love letters addressed to a dead person
oh god oh god,
can your hear the water rush)
the disposal is running in the sink
"what are you a robot"
stop talking about anarchy this isnt a drug bust
two white balloons and blood on the ceiling
haven't you ever seen a dead body before?

Goin down
Drowning out the sting
Salt water leaks
Burns like holy water
Not just from the cuts in my skin
In my spit
My eyes

Kept the straight jackets to make my masks
****** stitches, most favored gloss
Demonize pill popping even though it keeps the ******* behind the gates
Those ******* taste horrible with *****

Instead of getting **** faced to forget the artificial praise
Just throw em to the sea
Make sure it's the dead
Sleeping with the fishes and the girl I used to be

Better yet I’ll jump in hoping this is just a dream
Either its me dying in now or waking from vivid nothingness
But will it even be my own bed
His bed
Her bed
What the **** are these stains

Option 3: choking on thread and barfing up empty stomachs and swallowing my pride
Playing with fuckboys like a rejected barbie doll, a hallow head growing rhino horns
One hell of a drug
One hell of a *****
Pitchforks not hot enough to boil off plastic flesh

Next thing to bleach are the eyes
Can’t stand her disappointed eyes
My eyes
Hellbent *****
Reflecting vanity in broken glass
What the point for a window with no soul
Divine Frankiestien
That's  monster I’ve become

No

The monster they made me to be

Somber silence,
The simple sound of violence;
And truth be told,
It's my desire

So let it be
More than a memory;
As it fills your soul,
Feed the fire

Tempting flames,
Chaotic games,
Made insane,
And left in pain

And isn't it so beautiful,
And isn't it so right,
And isn't it pure justice
To watch them burn at night?

So light your matches,
So grab your torches,
Man your pitchforks,
We're gonna play;
A night of flames,
A night of games,
A night of pain,
It's all to gain
Until break of day

And when the sun beats down
Nothing is left to be found
Not a single silent signal
No evidence around

Nothing like sweet revenge

Fire up your talk boxes
Life’s such a bore
Until we discover
Today’s Rage du Jour

Do we have to turn Red
if they’re feeling Blue?

Does screaming more loudly
make it any more true?

Is it fate we must hate if
They want to make it great?

Must our faces turn redder if
They want to build back better?

What if we hear different voices?
And what if they make different choices?

Do we choose to lash out
always feel justified
As our fears turn to rage
and we’re bloated with pride?

Who among us sees clearly?
Whose judgment is never astray?

What great one among us holds just the right viewpoints
to keep cyber pitchforks at bay?

He said sinless stoneholders
could fire away
Yet there’s rocks hurling
constantly every which way

Can’t we sew up our lips
and ***** up our our ears
and realize there’s much
we can learn from our peers?

It’s hard to see it through our spite
But life is rarely black or white

Whatever happened to nuance?
When did we lose the gray?
How did this digital mob get the power to police every last thing we say?

There’s a whole vibrant world in 4K
We’re all welcome to come out and play
Let’s not label them Other
When they’re truly our brother
Only Kindness can show us the way

In all directness I’ve lost my voice.
Enveloped by an irrational fear
of picking up the pen.
Thinking twice about every line.
As we shift and life materializes
before our eyes we find it harder
to say the things worth saying to ourselves.

Calm that beating heart, let it rest.

This life is tumulus.
Like a disappointed teenager
backdoor rebel, your biker
all bruised and blue
the guy who lies to you
out of habit or the girl
who’ll spread her legs
just to make sure beds
stay warm, or the grocer
who’ll stock rotten fruit
to meet the bills or people
who **** for oil, for drugs, for fun.

Disappointed, every last one of them.

So we fight back,
by puffing on our bongs
by disconnecting to our palms
by blasting the music on some large
stereo system, surround sound, or 3D vision
we spray paint on walls, or we fall prey to our whims
we bet on winning three hands straight
or decide we know our own fate,
or some of us just sit,
and wait,
for something, anything to happen
to shatter, to break apart, to give birth to some
black hole that’ll **** it all up and spit out something
back again. Anything we can reshape or begin.

But after chaos comes even more chaos.

And with loss comes anger,
mounted, building, and enraged,
like raised pitchforks chasing town monsters,
oh the horror, some of us might not bare to see it
won’t believe it, or try to bargain it away,
and not feel the earth shake from aftershock.
It’s too difficult to soak it up.
Let’s not tear down what is functioning fine
Just so we can live another lie?
I’m fine with mine, where it rests inside
a mask so well displayed,
that even I believe it some days.

Why change?

The question that lingers on the page,
Stumped by fear of jumping out of comfort zones,
Paralyzed by the thought that home
isn’t where you heart is, but rather,
the space your spirit needs to breathe.

And with that word
the realization of responsibility,
this burden it makes,
this weight that we can’t wait
to throw off to
another day, maybe
another time, maybe
could you keep your voice
down lady? Just after this last drink
baby, and I swear I’ll get back to you,

hey, I want my rite of passage too.

But the world moves too fast,
asks too much, doesn’t know when
to stop, drunk on its own axis,
either get off your *****
or be swept by the tide,
because there’s no where
you can run and hide
no matter how hard you try
you’re gonna have to listen to what you already know.

But guess what happens to people like that?

They grow.

Revolution  is knocking at the garden gate
With pitchforks and spoons to guard against fate
The people drench me with milk and holy water
And stare at me as if I slept with their daughter
I stand in white suit and a red tie
I look like a half decent guy
My hairs slicked back and my tongue coated in honey
And I smell like old bars and good money
With a tattered old suitcase in hand
I try to get you to understand
You don't have to sell your soul
That isn't my goal
Just buy some new high quality oven mits
and don't throw a fit

They say that the manic people
are most passionate

I am most passionate about
our love, your hands, thoughts, and words.

Our love, your hands, thoughts, and words make me
m a n i c.

and then...

PANIC.
The breath is stolen away by the demons
who stick their pitchforks into my brain
repeatedly, allowing my past to ooze out
and spread like wild fire.

PANIC.
The tears that try to put out the fire but in return
send shivers up my spine. The body turns cold as if it is
d e a d.

PANIC.
Is the worry of the ashes left behind by the fire.
Who is going to clean this up so I can breath again...

or will the flame begin again before we can clean up this mess.

But slowly the individual cells begin to heal
and when combined with chemicals that are released
clean up the left over ashes even faster.

We need one day to talk
and one day to rest
and one day to clean up the mess

and after it all
we'll move along and i'll forget those chemicals are in my brain
and when you look into my eyes....

I hope you'll see me.
and not the panic in me.

Did you seriously just hashtag a hashtag
Is something like that even allowed
People will be tripping over themselves
You really know how to rile up a crowd

You're bringing all that is known to the tipping point
What's left of what's sane to the brink
Turning civilization onto its head
Before you tried this stunt, did you stop to think

That you would be creating a mob of angry villagers
Digging out their pitchforks and their torches
Stirring the posse into a frenzy
Before they've even mounted the horses

Or that this fiasco would upset the apple cart
Spilling its contents all over the floor
Cause an epidemic of heebie jeebies
Perhaps even the war of all wars

I'm not sure when you hashtaged the hashtag
You were aware of what it might do
Is it to late to take it all back
Otherwise I believe we're all *******

#I'mserioushere

here Devils all cry, it was not unlike staring at a king’s fire foaming, desperate tricks, mad fevers, not a soul felt

whether a day’s trend signifies hell, plenty of features cover the swan’s wings, but pitchforks are of smooth Vanadium



destined to serve, it will then serve destiny, earn conception inconsequential slave, free to extinguish, free to ignite

every possible leaf, breath, or stone, it factors a wasteful excessive task, issues its core in a desperate effort to nestle



dimming in the cave hall, a no account angel leaves by torch flicker, twitching ears, tracking blood, there is a fuel

which is harsh black anxiety high-strung coal made trans-lucid, and will burn and leave no trace once it mates



alert in the darkest moment, it was simple ancient criteria, easy renewal, meaning’s burden, your decorated time

ceases to struggle for attention, smoke implies the flame, but you cannot burn and at the same time remain



hark, how man’s assignments ring

glory to one thing among things

pieces of worth in the merciless wild

god and cinders reconciled

A man spoke to me, not my friend, but still
His words were gilded and I listened
And as he raved, his brutal demeanor
Surprised me, and two more voices came.

They had no wings nor halos
Their hands were free of pitchforks,
But they spoke as we have seen, and said,
This This man man is is precious insane.

My head vibrated like the drum they took it for
And my ears cleaved in two
I tried to listen to the man before me
But I was too deep in my own beliefs.

For he seemed bad and good
Fun and frightening
I could not decide where I stood
And the man leapt on me

With one hand he shook mine
With the other he teared at my eyelids
I did not know what to do
For he was acting according to my plan

He left me warm and cold
Unsure of myself
And I slept there
Until I knew what he was

He was the voices
The terrible decision to make
For neither he nor I could decide
If he was a killer or a gem,

For we were both men.

Run free,
Run wild,
Run like the wind,
This way no one can hurt you.

You are the creature of the night,
You run through the darkness,
No one likes you,
No one cares,
The thing with you,
Is what you do,
You stab, slaughter and ****!

Run free,
Run wild,
Run like the wind,
This way no one can hurt you.

The clock strikes midnight,
And the angry mob wait for you,
With torches,
With Pitchforks,
And with guns,
They all want a piece of you,
'Cause you stole their young'uns!

Run free,
Run wild,
Run like the wind,
This way no one can hurt you.
Hurt you!

I open my window and toss my hair to the trees.
Someone told me birds use hair to insulate their nests.
Google says it’s harmful, but the birds and I have an understanding:
they won’t be strangled, and I won’t be stranded.

All I do is shed;
flesh hangs off bones like someone else’s dress,
I put on jewelry then take it off, hoping the fool’s gold won’t crumble
in my wallet. I’m sure I’ll self-immolate
if earring-backs and claw-clasps
keep licking my skin.
I shed hair and thighs,
guilt and fingernails, doubt and light,
until the world is full of me and I am full of nothing.

I gather my hair from brushes and shower drains,
pluck it from elastics and carpets, slice it out of vacuum rollers
with a box cutter, roll it into a tumbleweed in my palms.
Then to the window, where I drop it onto crabapple branches below.
I want the robins and starlings and sparrows,
the heaven-sent cardinals,
the crows I tell my secrets to,
to build a nest with my dead parts,
to make a home from the parts of me that couldn’t hold on.

Midsummer,
the worn-out end of June brushes against the beginning
of July and I’m wearing shorts to work for the first time in years.
I’m reading fiction in the sun, writing down my horoscope,
pretending I’m not a hostage to that first week in April
where he hurt my feelings, and I just hurt.

All I do is patter;
my hair drips to the floor in long, black rivers,
my aura drips down my back like a gas leak,
I think about how many trees I cut down to make myself,
and I think about birds falling asleep
in a haunt that’s made of me.

Losing my hair, losing my patience—
legs thinning, heartbeat skipping,
eyes squinting like commas, mouth tensing like a fist,
fingers like pitchforks reaching up from the grave,
skin like an avocado rotting on the counter.
All this losing, at least I’m helping the birds.

Words come and go with no consequence,
I buy dumb **** online and write poems without any soul,
I imagine a life where love is a faucet that drips through the night,
and I dream of him with long hair and daisies in his teeth.
My writing doesn’t pinch, my feet don’t tingle,
I just knot phrases around each other like tangled string lights
with half the bulbs burnt out, and it’s fine to say things like that.

I’m on a losing streak, but the birds don’t know it,
they tend to their babies, they sing to the dawn.
I can shed my way across summer like that was always the plan,
like I wasn’t born to ache, to be left gutted and graceless and wondering.
I wasn’t made to be love-bombed or pulled into trench warfare
after being invited to a picnic. I didn’t want to hold the gun,
but he was screaming to pull the trigger, and then my skirt was ruined.

I can leave my body in the grass and my hair in the trees,
I can write dry poems and feed them to the wind,
I can leave a trail of me through the trees like I was never there,
and when I find my way back, only the birds will know the difference.

Like a restless little upbeat cabaret. But I disagree today.
Hilarious decapitated, degraded parts of the soul and body.
The left thumb and the right index, pieces of a lively jelly
consisted of dark and shiny old blood. Pieces from the railroad.
Hilarious.

Comical anxiety in the late hours, vomiting
in the early. My euphoria when blood
drains and thickens. Blood's silent, never
violent, aesthetic, comical.

Amusing ****-faced, *** licking hypocrite-
selfless sons of ******* wanting to know
how I feel and what's up. Nothing's up
and everything's down, little deprived teens of a world where
only Coca-Cola matters. Amusing.

Entertaining nightmares, a head rolling into the sewer, a ******
dark finger bouncing after and the floating soul has come to say
"the dead can't testify and because I can't take an eye for an eye,
in the afterlife I'll haunt you till you die."

Sympathy is reserved for George Bush and empathy for the African children.
So don't wave it in my face, Coca-Cola teens. Pick up your pitchforks and hang me around the gallows pole.
Shoot concrete in my veins because today I'm lifeless just like my telephone. There's nothing to gain and I can't fight the pain.

That's why today I'm insane.
-Fariiniq

Maybe you have a bigger vision
Maybe there are things we don't see
Factors that bind you
That make you do all this crap to us
But we are the community
This is supposed to be for us
Don't you read our messages?
I'm sure you can spy on the Pub
From some cyber-crack in the walls
Can't you hear the chatter bubbling
Roiling over furiously
Foaming at the mouth
Like a hundred starving stomachs
Hungered until cannibalism
Becomes the only option
You should be listening
To the lynching mob
The drunken crowd
With pitchforks
Listen to them coming
For no other reason
Than to run the other way
You're next
Whether justly or not
Your silence has made you guilty
There he goes everyone!
Most hated man online

If Alice stayed in Wonderland, I wonder what she'd find.
Would the revolution come? Or would we stay in double-bind?
Did Carroll have a migraine? Or a tumor in his head?
Is violet the favorite color because blood was meant to be shed?
What if a brunette fell down the rabbit hole? Would she even fall?
Or would she be too busy speaking to clouds, which speak to us all.
Would the Hatter be a shaman, or a schizophrenic fool?
Would he be put away on Earth, if indeed he broke the rules?
Would Alice have encountered serpents? Or was she bit from the start?
Would her sword still be a weapon? Or an inverted cross?
Did she believe in holy spirits, and evil that impaled?
Did she believe in gender wars, where zygotes did prevail?
Was there a sun in wonderland? Was it the biggest star?
What if Bethlehem had no nightfall, would they still see It from afar?
What was Alice's sign? Or was she the bulls-eye?
Or perhaps she was the 13th sign, and therefore never cried.
Did she recite the alphabet, and wonder where the letters lie?
A Beast, Love Man, Your Death, Count ZzZ's... (Don't be surprised.)
Is every day a mental health day in Wonderland? Do they believe in Halloween?
Do they remember past lives, as they remember Alice? Do they celebrate Christmas Eve?
If the Queen of Hearts was cut in half, would a question mark remain?
Did Jesus make a big mistake, and so we live in vain?
After the dragon's death, did Alice get bored?
Or did she start to play with pitchforks, knives, spoons and swords?
Did Alice believe in God? And was there knowledge in the tree?
And was this knowledge poison, or did it set her free?