...mythos...

the aptly titled and confusing Talking Heads spread so many goddamned myths
it's kind'a hard to sift through the sea of their bullshit
and honesty's taken a shotgun blast to the gut, it seems, because everything's just a game of splicing hairs and using incorrect lenses on fucked up microscopes to narrowly look at a sliver of an issue

for instance, the myth of black on black crime.
y'all are quite aware that every racial demographic is more apt to be killed by a member of their same race, right?
we cannibalize, y'see, and if you don't believe me just research that shit for yourself. never been too great at math, but this time i finally got the numbers right.

and i get how that myth got spread before we had information at our fingertips, but nowadays it seems kind of silly to let people who get paid obscene amounts of money to flap their clumsy gums and bloviate in grotesque ways to manipulate us, or am i just being that annoying kid reminding everyone that 'you know, cows have lives, too', at a mcdonald's?

or when you remind someone who denies climate change that somewhere between 97-99 percent of climatologists agree that it is indeed happening, whether or not the denier wants to drive their SUV, they may say,
'yeah, but in his day, Galileo was against the scientific community as well'
no he wasn't
he was against community writ large, numbnut
you're conflating the terms, 'scientific community' isn't colloquial and don't you  misuse her pretty name such, it's embarrassing.
there was hardly even a scientific community to speak of in the days where people thought the world was flat, so to say that 'if you were a dissenter then, you weren't taken seriously, and thus to not take those in disagreement with the scientific community today seriously is an equal sin' is disingenuous dribble, yet the myth persists

seems like bein' logical and bein' genuine is either getting harder for us, or when we aren't either of those things, it's easier for everyone else to see
i can't tell for sure which it is, but i know we get spoonfed myths
they promised us it would trickle down by now if we just
fucking tightened the belt on the lower class just a wee little bit
give a few tax breaks to the disgustingly rich
which we could totally do as long as we gave a few less
bologna sandwiches to the homeless

and they used such a pretty word- trickle. the kind of rain you like. the sort that comes with teenage memories of kissing your significant other on the first day of autumn. before the warm of summer burned off and kept the water from getting cold all the way down.
trickle. doesn't it sound pretty?
but it never rained. and maybe some of those duped into the mythology of reagonomics just so deeply invested their hearts into the idea (because their stomachs were empty and so were their heads, because the brain is hungrier than the gut) that they couldn't reasonably let go. it had been decades of drought. they were hoping for that storm that happens during those conditions of climate.
it always rains the hardest after so many days of dryness, right?
right?
it has to be, and so maybe they cling

here's the trick to selling a myth,
it helps to come from a place of power.
if you're going to lie, it helps to rhyme
good slogans are easy to devour

you dole out bits of truth that have been adjusted just ever so slightly obtuse
never too much but just enough to latch onto
find the tribe with which a certain group identifies and then vilify the opposing side
'cause every good story needs conflict
'specially the ones we tell our kids at night

oh, that's another thing! like tobacco and religion, hook 'em while they're young.

i'm sure each of you remember when you found out certain stories you were told weren't true,
the tooth fairy was probably the easiest to stomach, because how long can that charming little story last?
the easter bunny is a little bit more harsh, innit?
santa usually hurts.
some people can never get away from their inducted religion, and no one can blame 'em.

but the nastiest lie of all the myths we have to buy is that we're more different than we are the same.
we share half of our genetic code with fuckin' bananas, for cryin' out loud. 60% with fruit flies. 75% with those pesky mice we lay down poison for.
if we can't reject the narrative that's being written for us
by some really ugly fucks on radio stations
or some really pretty people on t.v.
maybe we don't deserve to think for ourselves

let rush limbaugh and bill maher do it for you, why not? what's the worst that could happen?
it's not like we're capable of destroying every last person and our entire surroundings.

our stories are mirrors of ourselves,
and which ones we decide to create
and which ones to listen to and believe
is exactly how history will remember us

so which myth do you want to pick?

Machine Guns and Inaudible Voices (chunk II)

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I'm 100% Right

Feed me your hate, feed me your politics
Feed me your religious divides
but not your bullshit
(I can't stomach it)
Nuance is tough, it requires listening
And I know that discourse these days
is fucking deafening
(so I'll shout and sing)

You can never be one hundred percent right
For every pure truth, philosophy has another side
But if we just shed some light
on humanity, we just might
find peace once and a while

I might pretend like I know what I'm saying
But at the end of the day I might as well
just be praying
(stuck hesitating)
My brittle words are all I have
But in the end our thoughts are the
only things that really last
(as frail as glass)

If the tactics of you and your enemy are the same
and only your ideologies change
you were never ever any different, anyway

Count your blessing and scrapes equally
maybe if you gave the score an accurate tally
You just might be able to see
you can't view life simply
as a matter of differences seen
through the lens of 'you or me'

Meadowlands (the film)

a few days ago i snagged a film from my brother.
actually, a set of two dvds
it's October and the Halloween season's comin' around, so i wasn't surprised to see that it was a collection of ten horror movies
some corny, some old and corny, some with an A list budget but a B list cast
some with an A list director but a C list cast

the quality of these ten movies ranged from what was obviously no better than a cellphone camera to decent film. one stood out.
in Blair Witch fashion, the camera crew seemed to be comprised of the actors in the film (though a brief study of the overall technicians would dispute this)
the devices available to record were provided by the actors on set
seemingly
let me explain
it was a horror film in the guise of a documentary. kind of a 'Tell Tale Heart' meets 'elephant' (if you were one of the few who caught that flick that tried to recreate in an imaginative perspective the metaphoric events of the Columbine shootings).
three cats, dissociated with society and their boring post-high-school expectations gone awry, decide to murder a peer for fun. for an adrenaline rush and recognition.
now, the film follows a relatively predictable narrative, but my stupid ape brain started looking for patterns
do Jihadists seek the same thing?
do Theocrats universally advocate such ruin?

seems like terrorism depends on the amount of terror it can illicit
how many words in a headline it can convince to be typed in its name
how many irrational fears it can create

seems like these fame-seeking adolescents depend on how much fame they can accrue
how many words in a headline they can siphon away from any other topic but from themselves

and maybe the events would dwindle (even by a fraction) if we stopped feeding the beast
fame
fame
fame, what these minds crave the most
and it's given

terror
terror
terror
is what we give the terrorist
what they crave
what they spend their lives creating
and it's given

maybe we should just use our fucking brains
and beat the systems created
by the autonomic
a system relevant when dealing with a world
unconcerned by science and rational thinking

the nuanced part of the mind is small
because the differences in bell-curves are severe
but that doesn't mean we get to be lazy with ourselves
and as a projection, our philosophic morality

...simply because we're demanded to consider
every life worth saving....

Machine guns and Inaudible Voices

There’s a lot of things that should be said, so we’re hammering six strings

            -LJG

Say hello to James. He was your local actor/musician/barista. The kind that wore a smile always a little too tight, as if there were little strings on the insides of his cheeks that he stretched taut when he brushed his teeth in the morning. He used the same tone of voice that he automatically went into when he spoke to his grandmother- that tone that went up a half-octave at least.

His shift-supervisor said he reminded people of Steve from Blues Clues. Which, of course, made James giggle inside because he was always stoned or drunk at work. “Sounds about right, what adult star of a children television program could do that noise without some mental chemistry at play?”

Starbucks would be nothing if it weren’t for that chunk of the population that thought they could be rich and famous. Their ranks were filled with aspiring this or thats.  

“Fame” was something that the Greeks made up, in their giant stadiums, where men were ripped apart in front of other men by wild creatures or other men.      

Or, they’d hold theatre festivals; tragic plays performed in sets of threes would come on, a satyr at the end each to add a bit of comedy, and viola! The reinforcement of certain ideologies would be put in place, certain ones condemned, and the good little men of the society would come home and pass on the word to their wives.

Of course, the women of the time couldn’t go. No one’s entirely certain why, but many theories have been proposed. None make a bit of goddamned sense to anyone, though, if honesty were to be questioned.

But unless people (in the time of when James worked at Starbucks and ran the gamut of fame seeking) were adequately paid attention to, they were unhappy. And so this concept of perhaps misogynistic origins came to be the only thing of value anymore.

“Thank you for choosing Starbucks on Grand Avenue, this is James, how can I help you?” – the automated response that a ding in the headset provokes, Pavlovian and all.

“Yeah, I’ll have a tall wet cap, and stir it with your dick, willya?” – James hated it when friends came by during working hours. They always came during the busiest times and they always demanded his attention. The two-minute stop-clock insisted he rush customers in and out like cattle, on the other hand.

“Fuckin’ Monica. Hey, lemme borrow yours and I can swing somethin’ for you. Mine’s still at your mom’s place.”

“I’m swingin’ up front. Make me something good, ‘kay?”

Thankfully, it was a mid-shift. James normally fucking hated the ever-living guts out of the painfully slow mid-day routines, but he was still a little bit groggy from the into-the-wee-hour band celebratory shenanigans that were obligatory after every booked “gig”, so he was actually relieved for the rare afternoon shift.

Monica was too good-looking to be “just a friend” to James. Their platonic relationship had a finite time clock that was winding down to the terminal moment where the other shoe would drop. She was a ‘fan’ of his music, which made things worse, and he had accidentally seen her naked when he walked into her apartment without introduction.

Putting together James’ love for positive attention and praise, and his love for dark-brown nipples, he knew this was a deadly mixture. A fight waiting to happen. The ‘friends-only’ conversation. The ‘you’re a great guy but…’ talk.

He’d had that talk before in high school. Not too many times to become too bitter to still seek it. He was on a constant chase for the next heartbreak. At least they made for pretty decent songs.

He put some cream base in a blender with a banana and some chai mix, loaded it with ice and hit the button that gave cacophonic noise as an annoying blessing. He never made Monica the same thing twice, which is why she loved visiting when James worked. Normally, she was far too cool to be spotted in any store that wasn’t locally owned or a small business of some sort, but her friend worked for the corporate man, and she’d give him hell and take free drinks as often as she could.

Her thrift-shop suit with giant buttons and homemade accouterments jangled with annoying tenacity and fervor, as if they themselves didn’t want to be there, like wind chimes in a train station, but less elegant. They were embarrassed of the pretentiousness on display. They hated elitism. Her clutter was humble like Monica wasn’t.

Monica was proud of her snobbish and too-cool-for-life attitude. She made fun of herself for it, stealing thunder in a way that would piss Zeus off. She was the kind of girl who called the place James worked at “Starfucks”, and smile as if it were all the funnier because of how unoriginal it was. It was “meta”, she’d say.

If you told her that was pretentious, too, she’d say that was meta as well. When you asked her when things stopped being meta, she’d come back with something like, “When they do, eh? Eh?” and rib you.

Their banter was legendary.

In a cute kind of way.

The blender shut the fuck up finally. Monica was parking and coming indoors, so she had something to say or some extra minutes to slay.

“For what is your friend that you should seek him with hours to kill? Seek him always with hours to live” James whispered under his breath while he watched Monica walk with a sway in her step towards the store.

James wrote “Freeloading Bitch” on her cup and secured the lid, snagged a straw and had it ready on the counter when she came in. This spared him the task of making it look like she was paying for her sixteen ounces of weirdness.

Of course, there is a thing called sarcasm at play heavily here. And perhaps sarcasm came from somewhere deep in the recesses of human development, wherein societies got tired of always having to ostracize that person with a jackass sense of humor. And both Monica and he had such a jackass sense of humor.

This is not to say these two human beings are life mates of the intimate sort or any such thing. This is not to say they aren’t. This is just to say that they had a jackass sense of humor.

They would have been ostracized back in those older bits of our history, before we learned sarcasm. And how sweet! At least they’d at least have the two of them to drive each other crazy, and all the other jackasses before them.

But there is something to love about certain jackass comics. A person’s sense of humor wasn’t everything, after all. But society now lets them fly their sarcastic colors, because they, too, have picked up a new genetic trait on their collective funny bones.

After adequate pestering, she left James to the rest of his tedious shift, each minute taking longer to catch up to the last. Mopping, yeehaw! Mixing random powders into various bases, woohoo! Taking verbal abuse from superiors and customers alike, huzzah! And all for the exorbitant rate of $9.11 an hour, can you beat it?

The music was so predictable, that James knew where in his shift he was based on whichever mix was playing that day.

Music and money were funny things. Both seemed to be losing value at a much higher rate then, and no one seemed to be able to stop it. Seemed like all of the nutrients were evaporating and people tricked themselves into thinking they didn’t care, because otherwise the guilt would kill them.

This is why everyone then just needed to get together and forgive each other, unconditionally, without prejudice, just to get back to square one. Then they could go on judging and ostracizing again, but from a different perspective.

It was natural, you see. They just kept doing it, and cycles are goddamned hard to break. You could almost understand it.

            But James wouldn’t stop trying to be famous. Not rich, but famous. He had long known that had be been born rich, he would have spent his life’s worth to be known. To be important. To fix things, in his own half-baked way, by trying to send more happy vibes than bad ones through whatever artistic medium the world would listen to.

That’s what hubris will do to you. That’s what ego was all about. That’s what happens when you mix philanthropy and narcissism—a barista at Starbucks. Cute, too cute to be working just above minimum wage, but not quite talented enough or lucky enough or just not in the right place or in the right time to not be working there anymore.

Sometimes you’d get your run-of-the-mill, just-out-of-college (or high school, sometimes) or middle-aged salt-of-the-earth types, but not in San Luis Obispo or the other opulent towns of the Central Coast. Beaches were a luxury, then.

What James didn’t know right then, nor could he have, was that someone was definitely trying to kill him.

--- -- --

thursday

            James used the little bit of energy he had left at the end of his shift to push open those glass double-doors and was reminded of a fable he was taught as a kid in Sunday School (he was baptized Mormon, but was now a pretty firm anti-theist and unsure of where he stood in other terms of spirituality at this point in life, although after his initial break from ‘the faith’ he was previously more staunchly atheist) – a story where Jonas got swallowed by a whale. He felt what that character must’ve in terms of relief, he thought. He smiled and rifled through his pockets for his keys.

            Approaching his car, somewhat aloof, he noticed, a little too late, that he smelled something funny. It was kerosene, a cousin of gasoline, but James couldn’t have known that, either. Before he could even make an autonomic response, someone from behind him threw a Molotov cocktail, aimed directly at the car.

            And that was the last thing James remembered that day.

--- -- --

friday

            The first thing James could see from the slits of his eyelids when his eyeballs returned to duty was Monica.

            “Saved your ass, son. You owe me somethin’ fierce, eh?”

            “What were you doing there?”

            “I was hoping you had some leftover food, the expired sandwiches and shit. Or some of those ‘for donation’ pastries”

            …sleep…

--- -- --

late afternoon, friday

            James wasn’t burned, Lady Luck on his side, he passed out immediately from a shock to his noggin. Monica didn’t get a look at the actual event taking place, but she certainly saw the inferno. Hard to miss in a town like SLO.

            And instinct kicked in. She wasn’t able to work off of thoughts alone anymore, though now and again they certainly could kick in, but not override, her new functioning mode—rescue, survival, and the ability to hang this over James’ head for however long she wanted.

            She barreled through the atmosphere- her vision now a version of infrared, thick with smoke, now pluming up into the Western sky, and some really harsh smelling chemicals. It was hot- hot as all holy-fuck, but there was no chance in any of the many versions of the supposed hell, that she was going to let up. She was saving her goddamned friend, no bones about it.

            But in retrospect, she was a little bit pissed off. She was disappointed that she couldn’t even get a good look at the bastard that did this to the guy she’s been closest to since she could remember.

            “I don’t suppose you secretly owe a crime boss any money or you’re secretly a CIA operative with a false identity or you fucked somebody’s wife, eh?” she smiled and giggled ever so faintly, really trying her damnedest to provide some kind of soothing energy, something she wasn’t quite natural with.

            “I have no fucking clue, Monna. I really don’t”.

...and I don't know why she swallowed a fly... perhaps she'll die?

as I hide outside from what I thought was a rat sneaking around in my room but had turned out to be a clandestine hookah, the song 'Basket Case' by Green Day plays through my head,
'am I just paranoid, or am I just stoned?'
been ages since I've listened to that song. aww, high school.

there's a fly that's noisier than any other I have ever heard before outside and it's no larger than any other I've ever encountered. average size, no real noticeable differences, I assure you.
but the fucker is noisy!
at this moment, I'm wishing I could speak 'fly' and tell this asshole I'd rather it leave than commit murder, but the choice isn't mine, I cannot take this ruckus any more.
that's an odd offense to get murdered for, though, wouldn't you say? being noisy? didn't we collectively condemn that dude who lobbied a few bullets into a car full of teenage 'urban' human beings because he was angry at the decibel level of their music at a gas station?
I mean, there are bounds of reason for playing your music at a gas station, I suppose, I've only ever felt mildly annoyed if I didn't enjoy the song being played, and don't you just hate it when someone else's song that they're listening to in their car gets stuck in your head? all the same, damn, sir, does that sound like overkill. bullets don't cancel out noise, by the way, sir, they add to it. in quite a cacophonic way. mission, not accomplished.

but I have no problem with murdering a fly for the same offense, so where does the moral equivalency kick in?

is it intelligence? having a brain? consciousness?
can't be, it always seems more immoral in the public's perception to brutalize an animal than your average adult human. but they're obviously much less known for their cerebral prowess than your typical person. seems like the less intelligent (and therefore less powerful) an organism tends to be, the*more* immoral it is to kill it, up to a certain point.

chickens and cows and fish and pigs and certain rodents and certain other birds are cool to kill, too (depending on the rarity).
seems like the animals safe from the murder check-list are the ones that are either attractive/cute, bear some resemblances to the human species or are in some way vulnerable or rare...
even those sometimes get knocked off.
if you live in the water and aren't a mammal, you're pretty much screwed, too.

if the idea is that the closer we feel we can connect to something, the more immoral it is to kill it, perchance the things that are designed to separate are, by nature and default, harmful.
I'm not so sure on that one, I'm just tossin' it out there. hopin' someone might chew on it. because it seems like the more you want to understand something, the less likely you're going to want to destroy it.
maybe there's somethin' to that.

back to my fly.
he's started and stopped a few times, attacked my ears in a few dive-bombs, but ultimately hurt nothing.
where did aversions come from?
perhaps plague. this is stream of consciousness-style-philosophic-drivel-laden rambling, bear with me.
rodents have been known to carry the insects that brought our species to the brink of existence. so as a precaution, we prejudge rodents and insects (malaria, spread by mosquitos being the deadliest to humans) as a gut reaction, stuck in our noggin in the algorithm of a reflexive twitch.
so maybe it ain't so terrible to harm a fly?
not sure on that one either.
how guilty should one be about killing a non-human? ending a life, at all?
does it depend on how much they inconvenience you?
not understanding their nervous system at all (from a first person perspective at least) and not being able to experience what their level of consciousness is, if there is one, is it a risk one is willing to take?
what kind of little bits of unimaginable understanding might they have?
it could be infinitesimal, but so is their world. what if their perception matches their environment, and they're happy with that? seems like a good match to me.
not so sure about that one either.

are any of these words worth reading? were they worth the calories expended, thinking them up and writing them down?
believe it or not, the little pixels you're looking at required some energy to produce. I mean that literally, not metaphorically. I mean that technically. like, in a Newtonian sense. it's, like, physics, dude.
and if some energy was expended in the process of me producing this and you reading this, was it worth it, at all?
because, some bits of the world have been exchanged into and have resulted in what you are now reading. some pieces of that exploding star is now being stored on a network of tubes and cables and cords in something called a mainframe or some shit like that. some of the oldest stardust in the world is now whatever color this font is being presented to you in.
I wonder about that, too.

now the fly is caught somewhere, I don't know where but it's near, and it's flappin' it's goddamned wings so hard to try to get out. I'm guessing it's spider food.
I guess the spider doesn't have to question its morality. or maybe it does and we just don't know it yet. who knows? probably biologists, who'd claim their cognitive capabilities aren't up to par. and I'm sure they'd be basing their info on solid ground, whereas I'm in quicksand at best, cement at worst.
but I ask, anyway, because who knows if their tiny ganglia don't meet up for poker on what we call Friday Night?
or whatever that equivalent might be.

the atomic tendency to gather and increase their density at greater temperatures is the causing principle of the formation of complex matter, altogether. so even hydrogen has its preferences.
maybe that spider has a favorite tasting fly, who knows?
I bet somebody does. I bet I'm just totally wrong. but I'm still wonderin'.

whether or not a fly or a spider or a pig or a wee little hydrogen-dude has preferences, every person does. and maybe we shouldn't worry ourselves with it. maybe everyone gets to have one, a set of preferences, and we shouldn't get so fucking pissed at the variations. sure, with each new set comes challenges, and some add or detract from the human experience, I'm sure, but...

maybe we should just smash every idea together (by flapping our gums about an awful lot) and make one super big idea. maybe it'd be like giving god a french kiss, if there is such a thing, just looking at that idea.
can't do that until we start learning to speak universally, though, eh?
I reckon. we needa' get on that, snappy. someone call a translator.

maybe it won't happen 'till I can write a piece utilizing almost exclusively lower-case letters, yet somehow sneak in some upper-cases just for myself. somethin' seems a bit off about that, wouldn't you say?

anyway, I have no clue whatsoever how to stop writing this bit. so I'm just gonna' think up a title and push the 'publish' button now.
*curtain, removed*

sleepy

staring at a another page so blank and white yet again
hoping for some mysterious genius inspiration to hit
with pen in hand
and i've guzzled three cups of coffee and i'm still not waking
this perpetual chemical coma is so fucking debilitating
lookin' for clarity and i'm tired of waiting
tired of

not knowing
not understanding a single thing
trying to figure
what makes a person feel complete

i've got an itch in my skull i just can't control and it aches
put lots of shit in my lungs and guts as a metaphorical
safety-brake
but everything i see inside you or me and in between drags me down
societies see human beings in need and tosses a brick to those that drown
grab their ipods with headphones plugged in to kill the sound
tired of

pretending
like i don't know anything
trying to relate
to an ignorant society

Re: In Defense of Black Rage [and other rhyming words about brutality]

the police are heavy on their beat in the Missouri heat,
suppressing the unrest of another death left for all to see on the street,
and while unfriendly protest and looting may seem a backwards way to express ones rage,
you can understand the impulse to fuck shit up in the face of reckless execution all the same
no one's to blame except for the inciting cause

if they could just finally figure that they could stop a lot of violence if they thought twice before the twitch of a trigger
maybe the communities would be forever on their side
but the powerful puff up their chests and flash their badges, breaking our backs while neglecting the the masses
on peripheral lines, real people die due to masculine pride

no matter what you say, flashy badges
shouldn't often lead
to funeral pyre ashes

yet one per twenty six hours does an african americanian get shot by those with the power to end a life with almost no recourse
with very little remorse given to the families brought to the brink of ruin by the black hole put in the center of their universe,
even if the offender was perverse,
maybe you could'a just pepper sprayed that fuck, or used a billy-club, or be assisted by one of the six other officers nearby,
you've got the might, the power of state by your side, you can find a way to end this mess without another death on your hands,
everyone understands you've got one hell'uv'a job,
but once you've stepped over the lines, all hope is lost
and moral high-ground broke her ankle running away from the way you try to abuse her name,
'cause everyone who's black is in a gang
when you release your statements

i wait with bated breath
for the time that you end
a brutal encounter
without another death

and a lot of the times, you see,
as an imperfect human being,
you have perceived things differently
that what reality would've agreed
so maybe
you should leave the scene
without creating
another grieving family
or angry community

... in other words, just to be plain and simple

not everything easy, the world's violent
and with that, fuck, I'm not too thrilled
but not every traffic violation
or racially provoked 'routine search'
is a matter of 'kill or be killed'

...the devil's in the details...

war is an interesting type of hell because it has a devil on either side
where both opposing parties take pride in the amount that have died
and human life doesn't fit into the equation
these invasions aren't just a summation of body counts and property damage
if we can't manage this ravaged mindset, we're all fucking dead
in our hearts if not in practice
what we preach to our kids is that the other side is wrong
they're not really humans and they just don't belong on the face of the planet
damnit, it's a self-fulfilling prophecy
because hate breeds hate, I'm sorry to say

religious fervor and political boundaries only teach us to see other human beings as the enemy
and I'd love to break away from rhyming schemes but it seems like it's the only way to be heard
so listen up, folks: these goddamned arguments are absurd

how can a family have any dignity or pride while being Occupied?
and believe it or not, your freedom will be put on a waiting list if you don't agree that your rivals have a right to exist

if the Turks and Armenians can set aside their differences and mend broken fences, what's keeping the rest of you lot from coming together? I hear the Ottoman Empire was a real bastard out and out
they'd tear your tongue from your mouth for breathing a word of foreign prose
and the devil knows, the details are what sometimes keep us apart

but it's not too late to rectify the complaints of 1968
if we let go of our hate and bigotry and try to see
even our greatest enemies as human beings

...concessions...

we're all expected to concede once in awhile, aren't we?
the First Amendment (breathing free speech) and the FCC directly compete violently with each other
while national security and the Fourth have yet to settle their score
and the premise of it all got bitch-slapped in a 5-4 on the supreme court
and I know the Fourteenth had such honest and pure intentions
but it got hijacked by callous fucks and invented corporations
...in fairness, by accident
and prone we are all to needing to make concessions
that's why we have so many fucking amendments
(one per generation, except for our own...)

but there seems to be one relatively unscathed despite how many untimely graves we're forced to watch being dug up and prepared on a weekly basis, and the very stasis of the situation seems every bit as perilous as those the government decide are terrorists (that I do admit [though not to their extent] exist)
but this persists
a blister, a bloody, hairy, disgusting cyst on an otherwise beautiful document that has allowed the armament to obscene degrees
do you think people who could only reload one bullet per minute could see
just what these words would mean
in the grand scheme of things?

no, that's why at the very beginning we all agreed there would be a time that we would need to make some goddamn concessions
to lay down some sexy amendments

and mend the nasty contusions
of a more perfect union

we'll write a post-it-note and hope no one forgets it
and Clarence Thomas doesn't reject it
all I'm asking for
is a new Amendment

... I bet you didn't know Jesus is my Hero

I've been spending so much time doing unto others and turning the other cheek
that I've lost the fundamental argument levied by false followers of Christianity
and all I seek, I profess, is for us to progress past our own self-sustaining needs
to be able to practice what we preach and actually help the emaciated eat
I know I sound like a hippy, but...

Your own very Savior had a few things to say about the realities of today and the fact that scarcity exists
And his truth persists
That the cunning and morally flawed will seek to extract and withdraw exactly what they believe was always theirs in the first place
They'll use hate to divide and conquer and squander human holes in logic and philanthropy to succeed
and greed is the only universal truth
they always knew they use this fact to launch attacks against our own best interests

I bet they're betting on our own demise
to trade in a derivative game to add digits and figures to their bank balances
our own talents are being used in backwards fashion
to separate us from any hope to move forward
turning us into Uroboros- a self-devouring dragon

The profit motive is much stronger than anyone could have imagined
Had a framework for a more perfect nation, what the fuck  happened
to our ability to rise above to the current societal needs?
to strengthen our core and rise above the incomplete
assessments of what we should collectively be?
a shining beacon of humanity

I don't know for sure if Christ ever existed
But he's my hero without doubt
The crimes of life will always persist
Can't speak his truths so I'll shout

...please consider everything, every set of eyes comes with an unknown truth
and maybe if you just listened, you might come to terms with something new

ask me for *my* birth certificate, i goddamn dare you

The only thing on which my parents could ever agree

was that I was to be named after Amerigo Vespucci 

after that, the settlements and similarities ended

Then they revolted, through blood and ink, against my grandfather

threw shackles on my son and oppressed my neglected my daughter

generations later, my kin haven't fully mended

and my parents have been at it, one hand from the right, one from the left, since I was born. they've been arguing for so long at this point that neither side could ever admit to the other that even a fraction of their premise could possibly be right. it's like admitting you've been cheating on your significant other, if you don't fess up to wrong-doing within the first week, it's never going to happen.

the tensions have built up for too long now, the wine-infused fight raged on past the point of even remembering where the fulcrum of the dispute slipped askew

with the hope for resolution being dashed away by lawyers on either side of this parental fight

and 'heads' and 'tails' too involved in their own game of taking potshots and scoring points, banning anal sex while selling joints

it's all become white noise to me

I thought once your folks got divorced, you were supposed to double-up on presents during holidays

instead mine fight over where I'm to eat dinner and which denomination of their specific spiritual sect I'm going to write in salutation on thank-you cards,

"Dear Haliburton,

thank you this year for no-bid contracts,

and I hope your Christ's Mass is a fucking blast"

-or-

"Hello, Trader Joes,

I hope you know how much I love your overpriced selection of organic apples,

may them candles burn EVEN more than eights days

as long as that's not sacrilegious for me to say"

and instead of spending money on me

(my shoes are falling apart

i can't afford a decent education

and there are potholes all down my street)

they took all their collected pennies

and bankrupt the entire fucking neighborhood

poisoned the water supply, tore down the traffic lights

just to prove their side was right

they've even gone so far as to air commercials on Superbowl Sunday against each other

lobbied attacks with such hostile ad-hominem tempestuous energy

that agreeing at this point in time would resemble suicide more than compromise 

because the bickering has become such an intrinsic part of my parent's makeup

that letting go of their hate for one another would be more like identity loss to them

than an act of love for me

Amerigo Vespucci lent me his name

then my authors left me to waste

it feels too late
to suture up this laceration
unless, that is
my architects go on vacation
from tearing everything we built asunder
is that possible now?
one's left to hope and wonder

it's never too late
it's never too late
to relax your chest
and open up your ribs
and upchuck the hate

...on violence

just a few questions...

1. Imagine two people intent on fist-fighting. Maybe that time in high school in the quad where two people were squaring up. Are you the type who steps in and tries to intervene?

if you would, at this point the only consequence is perhaps a black eye, bruises or welts.

2. suppose they had knives. would you still step in? what if they were two people who you had some vested interest in? the outcome actually now is of importance to your own physical wellbeing?

now the risks are greater, but the outcome being key to your survival, you have little choice, right?  with a history of violence in the area being periphery, maybe you've armed yourself. maybe you're the toughest kid on the block and have defensive gear. maybe having you as a defensive ally makes the difference between the encounter.
your jugular is exposed, all the same.

... they're obviously out for blood.
and no amount of verbal technique you have can make the Montagues and Capulets agree on a 1400 year old dispute.
shit, you only have few words between the two of you that make sense. good translators are hard to find these days, you know. understandings hard to reach and all.
(whether or not you borrowed numbers and oil from them)
and last time you stepped in you made it a living hell for the involved parties and the entire neighborhood for god/allah knows how long.
hey, you even trained up cousins and uncles and other family members alongside these two factions last time around
you gave 'em spare switch-blades and billy clubs and maybe an underground explosive or two
but years later, they got up to mischief that spilled out onto vaguely interconnected cities around the contested territory
some even left a pipe-bomb in your garage and killed a few of your favorite family pets
causing you to become paranoid of even your own family members, snooping through their emails and texts and following them on twitter looking for certain keywords or phrases
what should you do this time?

Maybe this time walking away from a grudge match a century and a half in the making is an option?

The letter 'U' minus One

with every sip of hate I spit out the aftertaste to wash every bit of you away
and I lick at the salt that falls from my eyes down my face
I knew the world would never be the same
once I met you

and though it's all my fault, I'm at a loss
got married under the wrong set of stars
those holes in the sky were crossed

and though you were wrong, you were always right
should have given you a soft touch on the cheek
instead of another worthless fight

can't smoke enough to desensitize my tongue
I can still feel every atom inside my lungs
never got a search warrant
so the jury is hung
no clear-cut verdict
for either of us

my guts, my guts, they've dried out from the inside
ran out of bodily fluids on the day we died
I run, I run, but there's no place left to fucking hide
you gave up on me thoroughly and everyone knows why

so I concede and retreat to my empty life and cluttered room
to become the nothing everyone knew I would be
and wrap myself in the blanket that will become my tomb

but to be honest, there's just one silver lining
i've learned from the broken promises
and never will stop trying
to find something perfect and this time
i'll give kisses on the cheeks
instead of worthless fights