less of our fellow human beings
not that it ever did
but
life seems
especially meaningless
chaotic when surveyed
from the tail end
of a year such as this
sharp loss
seasoned with terror
at the close of the deadliest
year in our history
the horrible
the unnecessary
the senseless
death
“Colonizers write about flowers.
I tell you about children throwing rocks at Israeli tanks
seconds before becoming daisies.
I want to be like those poets who care about the moon.
Palestinians don’t see the moon from jail cells and prisons.”
— Noor Hindi / “Fuck Your Lectures on Craft, My People Are Dying”
I forget what that final word is. Time fog is hellish. What more do you require on the day of your death at 5:26 am?
“I like to get up when the dawn comes… The morning is the best time, there are no people around. My pleasant disposition likes the world with nobody in it.”
— Georgia O’ Keeffe / “Georgia O’Keeffe at Ghost Ranch”
I overhear them talking of justice served brusquely — of a red white and blue slap on the face. I hear them consider who to bring justice to next: the sliver of sharp approbation, the soft formless rejections of mercy. They’d kill just about anyone if they could get away with it, and they get away with an awful bruising lot. No cause for concern if you don’t cross their smoke-filled path, their grimy brows, or their sweat-impregnated clothes — the smell of fetid napalm drops absorbed on the hem of their soiled pants. One slicks his hair back in the countenance of Lugosi’s Dracula. Another has hair perfectly combed and sprayed in all the right places. One has an oily, dandruff speckled shock — the combination of the two as improbable as snow in Homestead. They mean business, and their business is booming.
“Who the hell wants unity with Nazis until and unless they stop being Nazis? … Deference to intolerance feeds intolerance.”
BraveMenRun in my family No BraveMenRun in my family No BraveMen in my family Dead men run in my family
men run in my family there r no men in my family
There was an inquisitor Who sold his bastard moor-sun — His chains sounded like bells in the hold— His sole tender mercy.
There was a latifundista Who took the hands of a Taino An eye, his wife & child, then his head — A dearth of gold chips under a dying sun.
BraveMenRun in my family BraveMenRun men run in my family there r no men in my family
There was the merchant at Sancti Spiritus Who pressed the souls Of African men women & children Into nuggets of coal.
There was the doleful great-grandfather Who abandoned my grandmother’s Two year old soul to Carmelite Nuns To 16 years of indentured servitude.
BraveMenRun in my family BraveMenRun men run in my family there r no men in my family
There was the grandfather apparatchik A man of the reddest ideals Who presided over the tribunals And went erect at the call of: ¡FUEGO!
There was grandfather mystery He ran the fastest — No name for his son — No name for me.
BraveMenRun in my family BraveMenRun men run in my family there r no men in my family
There was my father bipolarity A hole in his well worn sole — he Dove for his soul in the cracks Of Little Havana sidewalks.
There was a stepfather, an uncle, a stand-in All felons three: Bookmaker, cocaine cowboy, chauvinist Oo baby, oo baby, oo baby, please, What a family tree!
I run from my family.
“I end my life voluntarily because I cannot continue working… I do not want to convey to you a message of defeat but of continued struggle and of hope. Cuba will be free. I already am.”
The hospital beds fill up at an alarming rate
Millions travel despite warnings
You gonna stay safe?
Or insist on LIVE FREE OR DIE
Rather, LIVE FREE AND DIE
You patriot u
You tha’ coolest
You know you
U know ur family
You know selfish
(Fuck everyone else and their families)
Let’s look at the numbers…
Yeah, yea, ya: USA, U-S-A!
We’re number one
We numba’ 1
Be best, be 1
1 is the loneliest…
We’ve all gotta die someday
(Or live in long term fog some time)
Some way
It’s somewhere near the end
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang
But a whine and a shot
Of misanthropy
It sucks
To tolerate u
“I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine.”
His fragrance remained in the room when he left, and she picked up notes of Ambien and gin.
He turned into a dragon and blew smoke up his own ass: in this manner he floated away on convection currents over the next county into the tri-state area.
She was disputatious. She said she loved living in Bwana Johnny Time — the epoch of real mealy mouthed crying. She said she had cramps. The walls cared nothing of it. She insisted and sang “Silent Night.”
He was tall with small joints and thick limbs. His hair, tufted, was buffeted by the winds which were strong and cool this high in the atmosphere. Before he blew smoke up his ass he washed windows without panes, and took pains in his assiduousness.
(His father once digested him during a midday snack — and since then he felt as if he were covered in a film.)
He felt slightly dirty and smelled worse.
She was small with oblong limbs, and royally blonde-haired down to her quadriceps. She analyzed the filigree in the milliner’s shears and chose “deckle” as the word of the day; and cellophane was “thee” fabric. She smelled of Lithium and a life roughly lived. She ate only the crusts.
His name was Funty. Her name was Frenta. He blessed his goldfish. She fried hers. “Orange Poppers!” she proclaimed. His favorite animal was the Pileated Woodpecker. She peeled his navels.
She was obsessed with the texture of his body. His tortured male narcissism despaired. He happily fathered a wonderful future in Hades. He wanted to write a skeezy text in the underworld.
“Life has no meaning a priori… It is up to you to give it a meaning, and value is nothing but the meaning that you choose.”
Philanthropy feels more like idiopathic shill-anthropy in these waning days of the anthropocene. Cleave my heart on your plow, speed the ventricle asunder, and wave the cluster of veins, arteries and capillaries over your head. Oh what a beautiful sight that is.
Are you sick? Are you binging seven hours of last year’s hit cooking show? Is your heartless chest so vacuous that echoes don’t return to you? Your voice lost and splintering in that void becoming a still small accusation pinging away through the universe.
Oh fill me with vile thoughts and spidery venom instead of inoculating me against the COVID-21? Is sars-cov7 on its way? I trust I’ll freeze in the icy winds first.
Don’t trust anything goddd tells you — he carries about an abundance of lower case “d’s” with him, just in case his white masculinity is questioned. No proselytizing to be done, just a beating about the head the with handy extra “d’s.”
Good for something nothings they be. Idioteque, Montana they sang in unison while no one was listening.
“But what does it mean, the plague? It’s life, that’s all.”
my heart
distills
my blood
heliotrope
looking
for a sun
a plantation
of hateful
verdigris
factors
out to
go flow
out
big
star not
too far
from
severance
runs
rampant
over my
tripartite
welcome
parse
the light
hiding
from the
guards
foiling
the crowds
out in
the rain
“My journals are not written for others, nor do I usually look at them myself, but they are a special, indispensable form of talking to myself.”
