It’s hard to put forth beauty, desire, love, and hope when I’m unable to find those traits within myself. All I can submit is what the ink and page reflect back to me. Loneliness, dissatisfaction, and seething self-rage. How can I summarize a sadness that has lingered for years? It’s a sorrow that beckons me to gaze upon it as it whispers, “Write. Write. Write.”
This is your season
For self containment and being alone
Allowing your loneliness to break you with the past mistakes that have brought you to its doorstep
Isolation will always welcome you home with all of your storied scars
Just remember the rent is always due around here
Help end world hunger.
Love is not a two way street. It’s a dark alleyway that dead ends behind an old Chinese restaurant and its dumpster. You’re probably going to get mugged and murdered. The garbage men won’t even notice the trash covered corpse that’s missing body parts that have now become part of the menu.
Cops love sex, drugs, and rock and roll
Not for themselves, of course
For you
They get giddy when you’re filled with new ideas that could make you step out of line
Take to the streets
Riot
Resist
Pigs despise your cooperation because they so badly want to fuck you up, tase you, choke you out, shoot you
So that more of us are lured out into the open
So they can test tax funded toys against our non-compliance
Let’s see what we’re paying for
Don’t let them gaslight you with “Protect & Serve”
Light them up instead and make sure you use some gas
It’s what’s on the inside that counts. Is that so? Let’s open you up and look at your damaged organs, fatty.
You’re doing great! Don’t let the spotlight distract you. It’s just a heart attack. A hydraulic press crushing your sternum, making it hard to breath. I’m going to count off this first track to the tempo of “Staying Alive”. Did you run a sound check on your arteries so we can hear them screaming as the plaque fortifies for the encore? No? It’s cool. We’ve got a great front of house sound guy that will mix it live. Hell! We can make it a live album! We can call it “Dead at the Pizza Inn in the Key of Flatlining”. It could be your greatest work yet. It’s sure to beat out Billie Eilish for the Grammy.
We will help you craft a campaign and successfully reach your target audience.
Their billboards line the streets like crucifixions to remind me of who I was and who I will always be. Great marketing that sells me back to myself with words I’ve come to believe. This ad agency is getting its money worth, so I’ll remain alone and keep my hands and wallet in my pockets.
Less Paul and John. More Hall and Oats.
Silence. An apex predator. Stalking you no matter where you go and it found us. Neither one of us being able to run away from the hunter that was crouched in the room. The pounce. The kill. Two torn bodies. Dismembered and dragged into the night by the strength of our own muted jaws.
I come crawling back. I freely give up my power. On my knees. Prostrate. Your foot on my throat. Your gun pressed to my temple. You wait for me to fuck up. Safety off. I become some pitiful creature willing to be destroyed. Another name on your kill list.
I hope the next dominant species puts our bones in a museum and wonders how us fragile humans lasted so long.
How does it sit with you? Knowing that they didn’t cry over you, but moved on to the next meal. Chewing up. Shitting out.
I will never be able to show you the healing wounds I was able to stitch up with you in my life. All you could see was the blood soaking through gauze. You grew disgusted and left. Now everything smells of infection again.
Limited offer! Waste me and my time! It’s free!
She needed someone who didn’t want more from this life
Fuck
If Bob Dylan isn’t right more often than not
It ain’t me, babe.
Look at the rot that comes out of our mouths.
She told me that she liked that I have brains. Said it was “hot and sexy”. So, I blew them out to show her that mine were really cold and ugly. Why didn’t she call me again?
If you’ve ever heard “L.A. Blues” by the Stooges, you’ll know what to do
We’re just two broken speakers
Screeching feedback at each other
The harrowing noise of lies
Drowning out anything else we may have felt
The god in my hands
Made in my own likeness
For likes
I command you
Show me
Tell me
How to get max gains and lose weight
How to notice the red flags and loosely toss around the word “narcissist”
Show me
Tell me
All the conspiracies I should believe and which zodiac sign will fuck up my life
Show me
Tell me
How to keep my eyeliner from running and get my teeth whiter
How to pick up women and make money
Show me
Tell me
About the depths of my loneliness
About my need for external validation
Show me
Tell me
How to hate people different from myself and which Bible verse candidate to vote for
Show me
Tell me
About the war torn countries and make me care for ninety seconds
Show me
Tell me
How the world is coming to an end and the benefits of going vegan
Show me
Tell me
Which celebrity is cancelled and which chakra needs clearing
Show me
Tell me
Show me
Tell me
How to live
How to die
Call Center Sonata
I hear the silent tears of the ghetto
The disparity of class and race
Loss of job
Loss of money
Loss of home
Loss of property
Loss of life
Loss of freedom
The parts that make the whole mirage of the ghetto
All I can do is just listen to the ongoing war
All’s quiet on the white privileged front
I’ll never know the horrors of their front line
I don’t exist there
Your white American Jesus doesn’t exist there
Your white 80 year old presidents don’t exist there
Just fear
Of leaving in the back of a pig’s car
Or the meat wagon
Swipe right. You won’t regret it.
She wants a man. A good man. A southern man. A strong man. A wrong man. A man feels safe around because of his arsenal of guns. A man she feels comfortable enough around to be homophobic or racist. A god fearing man. A man that slaps her when she doesn’t submit and uses the same hand to comfort her at church the next day. A says he’s a sixty minute man, but lasts sixty seconds man. A hard working man. A drunk man because he “deserves it” man. A demands respect man. A man who can put her on his shoulders at a country music concert. A can name every player on a college football team even though he didn’t go man. A one in a million man that’s the dime a dozen man.
I need a translator for your dead air
Telling me that you don’t love me
That maybe you never did
I delicately adjust the antenna and put foil on it to boost the signal
My fists pound the receiver
Desperately, I press my ear to the speaker
60Hz humming so loud
I’ll go deaf
Being a junkie is easy work to get. I have two job openings that just became available on my street if you’re interested.
At a BP gas station near the interstate, a female NPC doing her best junkie act roams aimlessly around the station. She wanders into my field of view as I’m pumping gas. She looks at me and then sees my 10 year old daughter sitting in the passenger seat. “Tell that girl she looks like a whore!” the junkie shouts. “I should know, I have two!” She begins to walk towards the tractor trailer parking lot. “You motherfucker!” And then this Lot Lizard just seemingly disappeared. I wonder where her respawn point is?
I wanted to be your white rabbit
Piquing your curiosity so that you would follow me
Out of the suburbs
Out of the mundane
Beyond the normal
Beyond the accepted
To a wonderland
To the ragged edges of the wild
Places that don’t fit in your parent’s precious box nor can they be defined by society’s polite pleasantries
But you stayed
Seeking comfort under the label of being a “good girl”
Only talking of being wild and free
Of breaking the chains
Of setting sail for new lands
But never risking departure from the safety of your harbor
Remaining in a cage of opinions and expectation
Bible Belt Blues Jam
The good boys and girls club
Talking up their southern American Jesus
Sipping on fake coffee
Glory glory glory
Praying about thinking about praying to think about praying to think about saying, "yes" if Johnny asks them out
Insert Bible verse here
Can I get an “amen” for the lord making me nervous and awkward?
And where is Johnny?
He’s with Pastor Kyle
On their knees
And they’re not praying the gay away
They’re working on the gift of tongues
Hallelujah!