Opposite Sides

Pressure builds and fluids leak.
Seeping,
running down in slow motion,
poisoning the ground,
it feeds chemical reactions in our blood.
We go mad.
We say “yes” to the Doctors and Priests.
We pray to medication.
I am a Pantheist.
I belive god is in everything…even pills…even poison.
God is in my blood and in yours.
We are of the same tribe, but wear different war paint.
We live on opposite sides of the same mountain where
a factory sits on the top,
building pressure and leaking fluid.

“Never ’till the end”

There’s fun at the corners of your mouth.  I have you by the tail and dripping with expedience unfulfilled.  I’ll spell your name, my stranger from a lost decade, with ‘x’s, ‘o’s and black boxed innocence.  “Never ‘till the end,” I tell myself in the war room where plans for the apocalypse have resulted in a utopian Cracker Jack prize.   Spies have fled from the peek holes to touch themselves at the sight of grooming kittens.  Fresh mountain snow was never purer than my intentions to hook you on junk and practice my fingersmithing on your ethereal wallet.  You’re worth more to me when you’re helpless.  And I’m worth the weight of my jacket on a clothes line–hundreds sewn in the lining and a student debt bill in the pocket.

Working Hands “Mic Check”

I have working hands, playful hands, joining in the band.  My mind is set upon the vision of others.  Heaven on earth for more than a handful.  Am I a waking lion or a sleeping giant?  I stand in the middle of the circle.  Shame.  Leaders: we have none.  We are supposed to be proud of that, but sometimes I wonder.  Many voices speaking at once is only noise unless it becomes music.  Can we become music?  Are we already music for which we have yet to develop an ear?  “Mic Check”  “Mic Check”  Five words.  Five words.  I don’t speak well in five words.  I want them to string together, to bounce, and dance, and lead us out of darkness into the blinding unfamiliar truth.

#OccupyWallStreet #OWS

The cops are here.  They are shouting: “The Pepper Spray!!  The Pepper Spray!!”  Baton music stuck in my mind.  Played on flesh.  Played on the Press.  “I took a baton to the gut.”  My gut is empty.  It doesn’t have to be.  The kitchen is near.  One of the 99% has been evicted from their kitchen.  Their gut is empty.  It doesn’t have to be.  It doesn’t have to be this way.  We will subsist on live feeds.  ”’I’m not resisting, I’m not resisting-‘ , and that’s when I got a boot in the face.”  Stories from the paddy Wagon.  Lost Signal…Lost Signal…we starve.  I starve.  I pray for salivation over RT:Rush Limbaugh: “I was more self-sufficient at age 10 than “this parade of human debris calling itself #OccupyWallStreet“ #OWS  Oh Rush, you fool.  They have built an entire working society on their own.  They’re big kids, college students, graduates without job prospects, parents with reduced hours, seniors on social security.  Hermain Cain says poor people only have themselves to blame.  Oh yes.  I see now.  It’s all our fault for not receiving the blessings of the market.  The Market giveth and taketh away.  The Market is just.  We all feel much better knowing we deserve no health care, poor nutrition, rotting teeth, deadend jobs, the thousands of dollars of debt that nice man at the bank said would be easy to pay off.  Yes, we are happier now knowing we deserve nothing.  And that is what we get.  And justice has been served in The Market’s name.    http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution  THIS LIVE STREAM IS FROM ST LOUIS!!   Why would I give a shit about StL.  Get me to New York, DEAR GOD.  They haven’t run out of injustice, have they?   *breath breath*  Ok.  ok.  Back in New York.  A slide show of lost signals and people’s legs and squggly lights and wind against a mic.  Why is the wind so against the microphone?  There is a calm…  But promises to take Union Square are being made.  Tomorrow.  Union Square.  Hamberger Hill.  Union Square.  Normandy.  Union Square.  ”Either we ain’t going no where or we’re taking Union Square.”  (Live)  ”Oh, no.  Can you see us?  It’s a secret.  Tomorrow.”

The Great Nation

I was going to hold off posting this or any others like it (I’m working on a series) but given the current political climate, I’ve decided the time is now.

The following is what it is.  Take it or leave it.  More may follow.

—–

The Great Nation was admired throughout the world for its impressive economic growth and substantial decrease in unemployment after re-legalizing slavery.  The sudden increase in GNP since the enactment of the Employment Assurance Act has been an annoyance to despots of every under-developed fiefdom who never outlawed slavery to begin with.  Many such regimes abolished slavery in childish opposition to The Great Nation.  Others even more childishly increased brutality toward their slave populations.  Some even going so far as to send diplomatic messages: “We won’t let those white shit-eaters think they can absorb the unique and time-honored traditions of our local slave-masters into their ‘melting-pot’ of corporate dominance.  Slave management will not be handed over to their greedy capitalist pig hands.”

In public response, The Great Nation outlawed slavery…yet again.  Rioting, intoxication, and copulating occurred in such overwhelming amounts that the economy was stimulated over-night.  (Three less-stable dictatorships subsequently collapsed from the embarrassment)  The spiked increase in prison inmates and unwanted children boosted the profits of two of the largest industries and contributors to the national economy: private prisons and slave trade…slavery becoming once again legal after 2-months of “employment deregulation.”

Politicians confidently re-assured their constituents: “We are laissez-faire Freidman capitalist and all that, but we can only go so far with deregulation.  And we do try to compromise with our compatriots across the aisle from time to time for the betterment of our country.”

It is mandatory for Minority Party members to be sterilized and frontal lobes removed before serving in the legislature.  Such policy the result of the Minority Party’s concessions in exchange for Dominion Party support of the “Take from Peter Give to Paul Regulation” (named thus by the Dominion Party as yet another compromise by the Minority Party)  The TPGPR required large corporate persons (120 millon in net worth or greater) to feed and house slaves.  Small corporate persons were exempt from such burdensome requirements to ensure there was still incentive for upstart “Worker Cooperatives.”  Large corporate persons generally avoid following this provision by manipulation of markets at tax time reducing their stock prices and the value of capital.  The yearly chaos as a result of seeming national financial collapse is exploited by these businesses to obtain government assistance and form obscenely large mergers.  Smaller and less sporting businesses are bankrupt in the wake.  Such sabotage of financial markets is, of course, illegal, but no one with the authority to prosecute those responsible has ever noticed anything suspicious about the “completely typical fluctuations of the economy.”

The current Minority Party legislature members are housed in a state hospital especially built on the National Hall campus to care for them.  Most are incapable of speech.  Those who can speak scream profanities or mumble ethnically derogatory jokes under their breath.  Four times a year, the Minority Party legislators are brought into the National Hall to vote.  Public masturbation is not uncommon.  Interns change diapers and wipe spittle as needed.  Minority Party votes are interpreted by Psychics for Christ, a non-for-profit, bi-partisan collection of minor celebrities and recovered drug addicts (many are both) who proclaim they were given the gift of psychic ability by Jesus Christ.  It is the only publicly recognized organization of psychics.  Anyone claiming psychic abilities without the help of Christ is quickly sterilized, lobotomized and endorsed as a Minority Party candidate for government office.

-R

Eat Paint #1 (a poem series)

This is first in what will be a series of poems inspired by the artwork of Tim Phelps.  I don’t know how many will be in the series.  This project will be continuous.

——–

growing from the void
beautifully dying
growing from the cold
and growing colder

not alive
just passing through time
pretty pretend life

the living burn around you
the darkness will reclaim you
beautifully dead
idea of life

In response to “i hope (my representative) did (vote to cut funding from Planned Parenthood)”

On facebook, I had posted this link at moveon.org and requested friends to contact their Representative and voice anger about votes for the Pence Amendment to H.R. 1 that bars all federal funding from Planned Parenthood health centers.

I had one–admittedly brave–friend simply comment “i hope mine did.”

“I may disagree with you. Can we still be friends?”

Well, this got my heckles up, so to speak, and this is my 822 word response:

I may have a differnce of opinion. Can we still be friends?

“In the state of Indiana there are 29 Planned Parenthood health centers. Only 4 of which perform abortions. Unless of course you are against birth control, STD testing, cancer prevention, adoption

services, and the educating of people about STD and pregnancy prevention.

“Of course I’m making the assumption that it’s the federal funds going to abortion that you disagree with. Are you also for redefining rape so less federal funds go to victims of statutory rape, incest, date-rape and other forms of acquaintance rape (77% of rapes are committed by non-strangers and only 2% of the victims of these rapes ever report them)? Should these women be forced to carry and birth the child of their attacker and either raise the child (without financial support, of course, because we don’t want ‘welfare queens’) or give the child up for adoption of which the great guilt and trauma that accompanies this decision is never discussed by those who claim to be protecting women by not allowing them to make the decision of an abortion because it causes so much emotional distress?

“At this point, my language is breaking down into the smarmy and sarcastic, but I find it hard to fight ridiculously obvious disregard for women’s rights and health with anything but disdain.

After all, disdain and disrespect is what the right express to me when they speak; Patronizing rhetoric that inherently places judgments on my life and my decisions that they believe I should not have the right to make for myself.

“I’m a sexually active 27 year old women who goes out to bars alone sometimes and on occasion wears short skirts and low-cut shirts. I am lucky to have never been physically sexually assaulted, but I have had men make degrading comments to me at all times of the day and night while I was wearing nothing suggesting sexual availability.

I have twice witnessed men masturbating in Chicago Public Transportation train cars in which him and I were the only passengers; I told both men to leave the train—in much less polite words—and if they had attacked me, it would not have been my fault. My entire life I have been told that I must be in constant fear because I am female, and if I don’t live in fear, hide at night, meekly ignore degrading comments and actions, the potentially violent consequences would be my fault, not the attacker’s. I am responsible for the actions of men, but can’t be trusted with the responsibility of caring for my own body and making my own sexual decisions.

“I’m a sexually active 27 year old woman who has never been pregnant or had an STD. I credit this to being educated about birth control and potential diseases, having access to medical care and testing, and taking the potential consequences of sexual activity very seriously. Yet, my decisions would be repeatedly condemned by those who would remove all access to gynecological education and health care from me despite the fact that being responsible and knowledgeable has prevented me from ever committing the great holocaust comparative crime of abortion.

“The logic from the right is clear: women are not to be part of the decision making process of their own sexuality yet we are to be responsible for all consequences. We are to be kept ignorant and then blamed for the results of ignorance. We are to have others define our sexuality for us and to tell us how, when and where to express it. We are to be punished for sexual activity and any potential children we have are to be punished too; no government support for either woman or child.

“This is not ‘pro-life’.

“Republicans and some Democrats are working to regress women’s rights. When they speak of returning to “the good old days”, this is what they are talking about. They don’t want to defend life.

If they gave a shit about life and quality of life, they wouldn’t be so quick to cut programs that help feed, clothe, shelter, and educate these children they so desperately want to be born. If they cared about life, they would be concerned about the conditions that children are born into. If they cared about life, they would want parents to be prepared and happy for the birth of a child, not obligated and burdened due to lack of options.

“Cutting funding to Planned Parenthood is only the tip of the misogynistic iceberg. This link to moveon.org has been circling around the facebooks and gives a quick and well sourced overview of some scary policies being considered around the country:

http://pol.moveon.org/waronwomen/

“Of course, in the end, I’m not saying much of anything that hasn’t been said by far more knowledgeable and articulate feminists than myself, but perhaps if more women—and men—say these things, we will convince these politicians that women are not going to curtsy and quietly disappear into the kitchen.”

I’ll never forgive you: a love poem

I’ll never forgive you
for inspiring me
to write a love poem
–or more specifically—
a happy love poem

I’ve written of heart break
and bitter expectations
shattered by phone calls and text messages,
cynical tirades of misguided emotions past,
resentful rhymes recalling broken promises
while snidely alluding to my vindictive solutions
to man-child mind games

I’ve written of sex
just sex
no more or less
emotion amputated cleanly and under intoxication

I’ve written off entire genders
castration with a stroke of the keyboard
all frustrations to be satisfied
by my own hands

But I’ve never written of love
evoking a summer’s day,
a star lit night,
or any manner of temperate weather

Lately, people have been asking
what I’m so happy about
and I deny it
how dare they imply
that there is a romantic hiding beneath this cynic

And yet here I sit
with a smile on my lips
at the thought of you
the continuous thought
which is more a feeling
of a soft caress up and down my spine,
of warm breath upon my neck,
of pale green eyes seeing me as I am

Oh now look what you’ve done

I attempt to describe your beauty
with words of which there are too few
and their meaning too cliché
for the task

How could I think I could write of love?
there is no honest vocabulary for it,
and I will never forgive you
for inspiring me to try.

the Jonestown finance reform bill died in committee (poem)

believe the mind is bound by the skull
and the ground is your greatest enemy
life lessons in helmet wearing and carpet burn emergency room visits
kneepad sex acts performed by the careless
mostly breathless
recklessly over passionate primates
save the date and RSVP
for when we all return to the trees
same time next millennium in the oceans
are iphones water proof?
can I watch the apocalypse on Google satellite?
the salvation application will uninstall
if you visit The Colbert Nation
bloated potato head is selling gold
dancing batman is buying
I suspect the living statue is lying
jugglers know their place as novelty acts for children
but clowns have too often become ring masters
and trade advertising time for a promotion to savior
someone put a clown nose on Jesus
why is no one else laughing?
Bozo will free us with seltzer water in clown savior’s face
and we will laugh again
on our way to the pink elephant and jackass parade
nose to rear
they march on
proudly singing a nonsense song
we can all just get along
now that I’ve poisoned the drinks

Tuesday night

I must be getting old because
          I’m losing sympathy for the obnoxious neighbors.
          – it is fucking Tuesday night.
                    Fucking. Tuesday.

I can’t be the cool girl forever
          agreeing to go to the strip club
          and driving home the drunk boys.
No.
I can’t be the cool girl forever
and it is fucking
          Tuesday
                    night.

I’ll never be one of the guys
          despite all the sexist jokes I laugh at
          and the drinks I buy for myself
          and giving as good as I get.
I can never be one of the guys
and I can’t be the cool girl forever
and it is fucking
                    Tuesday
                              night.