Here’s Another One: Gross Violation of International Law

There’s a bunch of buzz about drones these days But it’s just a bunch of buzz. Just a bunch of buzzwords. The presidents always say “As combat-ready global citizens, I see the end in ICBMs, In aerial assaults and journalists with heads. They decapitate our journalists, We cut the head off the snake. Mission completed. We will liberate these folks’ countryside, decapitate their high-value targets of opportunity with shock and awe. It’s our solemn duty. No folk’s boots on the ground. The only folk’s boots on the ground Will be non-American boots on non-American ground. We will shock and awe this non-American ground Until all the terrorist boots stop liberating the heads From our tactical journalists. This aerial mission Will be a high-value opportunity for their countryside, to be liberated simultaneously from Our boots that are already on the ground and From the assault of the terrorist boots that choke the target like a head still on a snake. As global citizens, It is our solemn duty to shock and awe this countryside and liberate this high-value non-American ground for the global journalists that these terrorist folks consider targets of opportunity. No boots on the ground. Drones and ICBMS will buzz right in shock and awe the solemn duty right out of these folks, cut the high-value heads off the high-value snakes, complete our global duty as solemn citizens and terrorize the countryside until these global citizens are confirmed decapitated. We’ll show these terrorist drones that the only thing they Get for cutting the heads off of our snakes is shock and awe. It’s our solemn duty. And if that means our drones have to enter the countryside to confirm the completion of the liberation mission and get non-american ground on the boots on the ground of bravo combat group on the ground, kicking up the blood and dust all around the countryside we’ll surround of any global folks on the ground who expound the sound and desire to have our boots off their ground? then our solemn drones with boots on the ground will shock and awe these folks and liberate them. Mission completed.”

dialectalogue (1)

A: “man best you can say of everything is that I’m sick of these days, these days nothing changes, it’s sick man nothing changes here best you can say. B: man I don’t even know these days, If it ain’t everything changing though that’s the best you can say. Man, I’m sick of these days, feels like nothing is the same, no changes man I don’t even know these days feels like everything is best as the same old nothing. A: I mean CHANGES, though! Though man I feel like everything is the same these days and I don’t even know nothing these days, I don’t know these days, don’t know nothing Except I’m sick of these days same old changes here best you can say. B: every change is the same old nothing and nothing changes, these days change nothing and change changes nothing. nothing? nothing changes everything these days, I don’t even know nothing these days Change done come through and changed everything, And nothing doing is the best you can say. (At the same time) A: but I sure am sick of how everything these days stays the same and nothing changes and I don’t even know, don’t even know nothing Best you can say is that the old changes need changing B: but changes done changed nothing and everything done these days changed nothing and I don’t even know, Don’t even know nothing Best you can say is that nothing needed changing (Together) A&B: and I’m sick of it.”

capitalist publishing llc

So many love Lermontov praise Pushkin, adore Dostoevsky, place a translator’s prose on top of the delicate, the most fetching truly sublime verse ever written. With a population so very smitten By simple words, written plainly so I submit our new product: annotated sparknotes.

paycheck

Eyes red, bleeding inside Like I worked a damn day. I did. I sat like a squeaky robot Knees creaky, wrists carping, elbows rusted joints arranged according to company policy. Knuckles cracked on their keyboard, at their labor. I think that they think that I think that I walked off the victor, because today is a Friday and they owed me money. And I got it. But it’s not the good kind of getting what you’re owed, like on the big screen, where you’ve got the Louisville slugger and the guy has the whimpering fear. It’s the other kind, the kind where you wake up sweating about an empty envelope and an HR lady who has heard it all before, heard every idiot fret out an hour behind that company grin. And that is the real question, better Than “to be or not to be” Or “am I my brother’s keeper” Or even “what does it all mean?” The real question You ask into the mirror with Eyes wide and reddening is "“What am I going to pay the lawyer with If they don’t give me my paycheck?”

man of steal

“Just the facts, Ms. Lane,” And he was again a blue wall of silence Guns poking out of his sleeves And holster. She wiped paint from her eyes. “Well, the psycho wore glasses, officer. Tall, white, handsome - I would’ve said a newscaster, but too tan. I would’ve said a golf-pro, but too many muscles. I would’ve said a lunk, but he set his lips like a scholar. I would’ve said a librarian, but he glared. I would’ve said a soldier, but his eyes were too wild. I would’ve said a revolutionary, But I don’t think he had anything to say. I would’ve said a police officer, But then he’d be you, Officer Kent.” Officer Kent’s learned lips Spread across his sun-darkened face As he moved his powerful, taut arm up To scratch his perfect straight nose where glasses did not sit. “Ms. Lane, I don’t think You have to worry about the police Dipping a raccoon in whitewash and swinging it around your house and we sure don’t have the time to repaper your powder room with copies of the Internationale. Besides, I don’t wear glasses.” She sighed. He was right, glasses Were an inescapable blemish An unsightly mark That immediately confirmed one’s identity. “I suppose you’re right.” Officer Kent smiled. “I’ll stick around tonight, ma’am, to give you a little peace of mind. There’s no telling whose out and about these days.” Lois smiled. “My hero. You know, I’ve got the funniest feeling That something is wrong. There’s too many yahoos, Bank robbers, low burglars, human cats, Face-painted villains, reds, and evil-geniuses around. I can’t help but think That things shouldn’t be so rowdy, So loud, so exciting. Listen to me Prattling on. Thank you, officer. Goodbye, now.” She closed the door. This superman, Satisfied that he was alone Turned to his cruiser. He opened his trunk And pushed the dead, dripping raccoon Onto the stack of papers in French, Leaving a white smear. He pressed a hidden panel In the wheel well of his trunk took out his glasses, and made for the driver’s side door. He unbuttoned his shirt with each step, dragged the blue curtains away and on stage beneath his glittery grin was tattooed the anarchy A

garbage

The basket tinkles, jingles, squishes full of, charmingly shreds Memos, mission statements, mid-life crises Calendars, calipers, Christmas portraits, Post-its, pencils, performance reviews Rave reviews of restaurants, resumes, rolodexes (still?) Staples, stationary, stock-sharing options Overtime, overtime, overtime (fuck!) Flexing folders, full files, faded memories My id (accidentally), my paystub and my life. But My interests, my politics, my ideas, My conscience, my clothes, My objections And my time Clang, ring, rock back and forth Into the bucket. Everything I throw in the garbage is too loud and people are starting to guess about me. I will have to be more careful About what I throw away and more quiet.

She got a small booty so i call her tina

Girl so bad her first name Osama
She been give good neck, last name bin llama
Assassinating precedent after precedent but never Obama
Don't give a fuck but she always do ya in the end like Tony Montana

enhanced interrogation/fourth of july

he lay dark-skinned and naked on a white floor,
stars pouring from eyes striped red across the inky navy field
of his vision.
those eyes closed. peace.

the door slammed open with a sudden bang, like fireworks
and bright light lit his hair and face up
like an entertainer on stage,
like an American Idol.

the star spangled banner whistled through the door,
through their straight teeth. they smiled wide and said
"we've got a treat for you, partner!
something hot, and honest!
nothing so honest and true
and American as apple pie."

and those good strong soldiers came and grabbed him with arms like football players,
and tied him down with the knots they learned as boy scouts.
and they pushed in a cafeteria lady's cart
and they joked about "mama's cooking."
and he thought at least it's not the water again. at least it's just a joke.

it was hot, honest American apple pie.
it was honestly hot, anyway. and they packed handful after
handful of hot, honest apple pie into his mouth and didn't stop
until his stomach was so hot and so honest
that he couldn't have lied about cutting down a cherry tree.

do you trust your government?

Do you trust your government?
I do! I do trust my government.
I trust my government to continue
the way it has been going.
That is, I trust my government
to have some difficulty in
maintaining a positive public opinion.
I trust my government to
vocally oppose racism and
gender and income inequality,
discrimination, poverty,
murder and war
and to persist in putting
the "institution" in that multifarous
institutional.
Most of all,
I trust my government to fail
to accomplish what
the people who make up
the government
believe is right.
And no, I'm not worried about
the newly elected
with their new ideas
changing my government
for the worse
to suit their agenda
because I trust
my government to be incapable even
of consistently accomplishing evil.

anxiety

I don't think they know (I trust them not to know)
I don't tell them, and I sure don't tell her.
I work hard to keep myself bound together, finger
page after page and I raise my cover against the rain
and I book before I crack up and break,
shatter and shake, rattle and quake no. wait
like the ground that embarrasses fate
let tears roll over and off, bourgeois water and gauche,
a socialist who knows only labor and cost.
standing shattered and blurry
on the corner of decision and hurry
on the corner of chaos and Division
on the corner of heartburn and excision.
The truth is that I've clammed up and quieted
the truth, that I'm violent and riotous
stupid and useless, rage to rule by ruthless
putrid abusive putative measures
I'm sure I hide inside my sweater
where I can't see or feel them. I worry
what I snort between my ignorant visions
in indecisive derision
at the pleasantries that escape inhibition
is like a dog biting a handful of provisions
I'm guaranteed to worsen by worrying my social position

an honest thief

it is a promise made and daily broken
to brake, and slow, and stop
and strip keys from their ring
and throw them haphazardly into
the wide open lock of the world.

to walk south
down the Pulaski skyline
that bourgeois revolution,
that polish caballero, my head holding ideas over it
like Hitler held tanks. That brazen defiance in the face of total
inadequacy. That American dream, that sleepy sneer.
That bridge that wasn't even new in 1930,
that bridge that couldn't do it's job when it was built.

to walk past that land of opportunity,
and to walk past Newark,
and to walk past Trenton,
and to walk past Camden.
and to walk past terror,
and addiction, and corruption,
and racism, and inequality,
and rape, and money,
and Patterson,

and find a field, dusty brown, no more green
in which to stagger and starve
and steal oneself
and live outside labor
finally an honest thief.

fifteen minute break

I declare and suspect
that you have never seen
such a beautiful sight
as sunlight filling globules
of gravity-stricken water
hovering like a ship in a bottle
three feet over my outstretched hands
for even this brief a moment in time.
I am a
big, sexy man
with
big, sexy hands
That snatch
this water-bottle out of the air as it falls.
The slosh inside slowly regains its faculties
Drips down the sides of the bottle
and settles back into the wave
I create walking down the path.
I tighten a bicep and curl
the bottle back into my line-of-vision
but the sight pales in comparison
To the taut, tanning skin of my heavy, heavy arms.
I sweat quietly, comfortably in the July hum
and suspect I am wasted inside,
as the air conditioning is wasted on my
massive, healthy bod draped in work cotton.
I am never too hot or too cold:
Ha-ha!
Yes,
I am a big, fat, muscular man.

millenial manifesto

i sit down all day at work, begging to scrape myself off my chair for a two minute walk to a twelve minute drive to lie down for four hours awake with a laptop on my chest followed by eight hours asleep with nothing on my mind. there is something wrong. this is not something that you can dispute. is my need to stand up and stretch my legs revolution? then i am born again in my adulthood: natural rebellion.

I am afraid, though, because I see that the rest of us are a fragile lock of glass. You can drop it in the keystone and watch the tumblrs unwind and unlock, discussion our rock against problems that probably won't stop - chief among them a ticking of a terrible clock that creaks towards hangover from the vocal treaty of low harmful garble on social media. We've had our fill of vigor and we're tired of vim this isn't the fifties the seventies or the sixties-we've figured out exactly how to effectively sin and now, well, we're simply not always interested.

We're meta. In terms of cool, we're better. You think your generation had swag? Think it was perfectly unique, subcultures coupled heroically like some lesser work of Shakespeare? The cliffnotes of your generation's swag fits in my girlfriend's handbag, youth. We bagged all your swag. We stole that shit or bought it from a thrift store or straight up made a better version ourselves. We took all the best parts of the brief history of American cool and now we wear them every day. Better, we know what they meant to you and they mean something similar to us, because we read about you and watched documentaries and learned how you thought. We especially learned where you made your mistakes and we’re avoiding them. You see us addicted to crack? You see us addicted to heroin? You see us on our college campuses getting shot by the national guard? Nah, you see us having a rad time at Occupy Wallstreet, half of us wilin' because we're drunk and high and the other wilin' because we're THERE doing HISTORY.

The funny thing is, we know our history so well that we're trapped in one of those hilariously wrong conceptions of time periods that comes with studying too much and seeing too little of reality: we see ourselves as a collected group. We see ourselves as a period of time. We see ourselves as a group of lines marked out of time, inevitably moving towards the construction of a decade's aesthetic. We're meta. We're meta as fuck. We have taken a step backwards and now we’re seeing a bigger picture. We’re seeing ourselves as we suppose others see us now and how time will probably see us. We’ve begun the self-fulfilling prophecy of youth in America.

Well, we thought so, anyway. Not to play the silly goose but to toss out a wild gander I suspect we can’t see the party for all the hipsters. Rather than the players we’re the audience watching ourselves, and out of the mess we’re the ones getting played. Sitting and waiting like a captive theatre audience, waiting for the dramatist’s tragedy to unfold, we forget that the story doesn’t write itself! Where’s our bildungsroman? Which one is our struggle? Is it war? Rape culture? Class struggle? The answer: there is none. We chase cool, and cool is made up.

Cool holds us together. Cool doesn’t exist. Since there's nothing holding us together, we're breakable. We’re the glass lock sitting in a solo cup of keystone; rip us out of the keystone and bang us against the hard wooden table of employment and all you’ve got is a bunch of broken, scattered shards. Realistically, we’re Milwaukee’s best, a roaring and shitty city with a high alcohol content. What’s left after the hangover? Just a town you don’t want to live in filled with people you don’t want to know.

You’re vexed, now. You’re upset. Cool doesn’t exist? Then what the fuck is a leather jacket? Shut up. Now, take the thirty-two year old hipster. Shit, take the twenty-eight year old hipster. These are people who should have fucking grown up by now and done something besides chasing what’s popular and redefining what makes cool. Why? Because when they grew older than twenty seven, they automatically became the antithesis of what’s cool. Look, don’t bother to argue. You know it’s as true as I do. Being young is cool. People who are old can’t fucking hang after a while. It’s just how things work. You may remember that creeping feeling of becoming a creep; that feeling is the slow and not-so-gentle feeling of becoming a person who supports themselves and later will support the weight of the next generation of youths. You become a creep because when you’re pulled off of the backs of the old and the next generation is piled on your back, the youth suspects your next move will be to drag them into employment to share your heavy load and therefore identifies you as their future potential oppressor. That’s where you lose your cool: when you become a future potential oppressor, as decided by the youth. That’s because we’re the youth and we build the cool. We tailor the cool to us and we keep it. You, old person, abuse and misuse and trick us into becoming like you and slowly we do. Under threat of starvation we get jobs. Under the onerous weight of 55 hour work weeks necessary at $17 an hour, we strive for promotion. Promotion means compliance. Promotion means forgetting your politics. Promotion means (eventually) corporate Stockholm Syndrome. And through all of this, the thing that keeps us going is the cool, until work becomes the focus of our lives. This usually occurs around 27. In the past, the cool has not faded, but rather has been replaced in importance by work, that thing in our society which gives you the right to be alive past the age of 27. Cool is replaced in importance but not memory; cool is the thing the older generations remember about their past, what keeps them together now that they’ve forgotten all the things they thought were important BACK IN THE DAY. Cool is what made the generations; cool is what kept them together.  

And that’s what’s going to work out for us, pretty soon, and then we won’t have our cool anymore, and then what will we have? Nothing. So we’re a pretty glass lock for now, floating in a glass of amber. And some of us sit wage slaves monday through friday and float on the weekends. And maybe later we’ll look back and wish we stretched our legs.

This is no heaven; that will be when everyone dies over the age of twenty seven. But that's a joke just like everything else it turns out there was no cool even in hell and the only thing left is writing the next book on the shelf for another generation that doesn't know the history of its self. but in the leg stretch there's still that thought best the one that makes me think maybe there's a hope yet and maybe it's not you but maybe it is so sit down and wait for me baby let's fit                                                 some thoughts in

suttungr vs the gods

Lo did Suttungr awake,
Near driven mad by the smell.
He lay facedown in a cowfield
His face puffy with drink, angry and hot
In a pillow of spew and cowshit. It
Was the dirtiest part of him
Besides his furs. The cows had come
Well past the noon of night
With their tongues out
To wash the cold off his
massive limbs. They had watched him
Stumble and retch, wrench himself
Out of the sky to lie groaning on grass
A giant wretch, near dead
With drink and in danger of
Waking up cold to the world.
He awoke among them
Well and truly licked by
Gifted beer and gifted mead,
Gifted too plentifully.
"Fuck,"
Said he. "I am hungover, verily.
Those motherfucking gods
Can really put 'em back."

Biography

I spent a year telling myself I should save it for later, that I was surviving my neighbors, that i would be alright if I just remembered to grip the taper and sip the vapors of the burning bible paper. After all, where there's smoke there's fire; but what i learned from putting the cart before the horse (of course) is that too much smoke makes it hard to see what stoked your ire. I finally got the hell out of Dodge by simply walking off the job, leaving the harpies of house and home to sleep in the bed they'd made for themselves.

Finally free, I met Mandy and put on a hot attraction via enfilading fire: I just kept shooting my load until the job was done in that shotgun furnace of a room, filled with sweat and stink and the closeness of camaraderie. In May I sucked up the flowery fragrance with both nostrils, let my fancy lightly turn. my grip loosened, the taper occasionally fell and voila! Autumn. The Fall came and I was still employed.

Sometimes I laid my head against the grey and chalky walls of my cubicle and wondered what it would be like to be buried underneath them; to be a stone column in my building 9 hours a day for 50 years and then to die at the end and have heavy slate piled on my head to hold me down. I would be more legible then, with my name and my death date the only thing left to tell about me.

Fear told me to live and so I did: that Autumn I found courage in cider and the time to roast pumpkin guts - found love in small titties and a big heart. I ate nuts and berries and Velveeta and beer and grew fat and hairy for winter, like a skinny bear with a slowly disappearing buttocks. Humanity joined me and no one saw us change like caterpillars in our winter clothes, no one saw our bodies under our stolen skins.

Prizewinner

Their smiles are all teeth
as they accept the token from the mopheaded degenerate
crushed behind his register.
But it is with arms like umbilical cords
And wiggly weak bodies
That they nervously tote their prize
until they can drop a firm hand
on the shiny red shoulder of their
first skeeball.

all the way down the lacquered wood ramp the ball is handed
deliberately from parent to teacher
doctor to priest
to the waiting college professor
who shines up a glossy red coat
on the ball that has felt sweat
and dead skin and moisturizer. And
he drops it in, into the center circle.
One hundred points (100). Bullseye. Jackpot.
Lights blare and music rolls
like a skyburst, inevitable but shocking,
as the led display shows the same old score
in bright red block letters:
HAPPY GRADUATION

the world of television and beds

no, i promise, it is still wonderful. in the world of television and beds
young people are not animals, never slaves. They are free.

Let me give you an example:

today you watched Futurama
from two a.m. to two p.m.
with a slight instinctive unease:
the stickiness of your blanket to your knees,
a growing warmth in your pillow case.
But you persevered
and kicked those school papers off your bed,
struggled mightily to continue doing nothing, kept your feet
from hitting the warm nut-jungle air
of your room. You stayed under your blanket.
If you think that was a good time
I think I heard your stomach rumble just now:
or anyway,
I remember that it's there.
Now:
a greasy tub of off-brand cheese doodles,
Totino's Pizza Rolls,
Hot Pockets
not Chinese food, because you will have to
get out of bed
and meet someone new.
You know what's good for you:
You'll keep your cheesy fingers off your crusty keys, partner  
You let those episodes roll along uninterrupted and

"mmmmm," how your nose will delight
As your stomach slowly roasts under your laptop battery.

Now doze.
Repeat. Futurama is in it's third season
but what season was it in when you started?
your legs are swimming in sweat like dead porous whales
and the old urge to accomplish adulthood rises in you
like a lesser man's gorge at the sight of your bed.
can you overcome your self? can you overcome me?
it is your choice: no bell will ring to tell you to shower,
to eat, to sleep, to move, to achieve. You will have to do it yourself
no one can do it for you, and unless you ask no one will help. So,
why don't we compromise; you can compromise your health and I will too. Meanwhile,
compose an e-mail to your psychologist
the title will be: "I still can't go to sleep."

yeah

yeah, well the only way to live is to struggle

and i plan to be too dumb to criticize

so i guess i got that going for me

skald

i am suttungr the giant
and i am older than age

wrapped in skins i stitched
by hand, in it a club of gnarled oak braids

i have lived before glory
and known no heroes days.

now i walk in their meadhall
my horn overfilled, but no cup do i take

they call themselves gods
but god sits in another plane

and he is neither fair nor blond
but thick and fat and terrible plain.

a terrible mallet chained to his wrist
over the crystalline lattice of metaphors make

and he lets it loll over the gods
their halls, thrones, glasses edged in gold and scraped

clean by elders ken, by hammer and pick and
man and woman and child gone already to fate.

on a day i will wake up face down in a cowpat
cold and licked by cattle in a dranksick state

and look about me and see that the gold is in the ground again
with the old bones, and the clock's weight


and there will be no gods to question suttungr the giant
for i am older than age

bulimic sifu

within this discussion of elliot rodger i know you long for me to see myself as the cracker ratchet, popping caps with trigger snatches of the clapping gadget but you know not the direction of the erection so why so automatically evaluative? why expect me to admit truth? when you ask me why i say i hate white people i say that the truth of the matter is not the end of it, that the truth of the matter is a vomited mess whose penny-worth will come from the convincing lies told about its width, its chunky consistency, its terrible stench. male, white, middle-class, privileged, and a serial comma. a long and terrible argument, but it's probably not 50/50, it's probably kinsey. a spectrum of boring, meaningless good and boring, meaningless evil, spread from subject to period, from white to white. it's ugly even for oxford to discuss these multiple clauses; it makes a truly cruel and unusual sentence to try for a spectrum of whites.

but truth is never a spectrum, oh truth is hot and bothersome, holding truth, being right. sexy and frustrating, oh so frustrating. these are the words spoken today and the words that readers hear: frustration is sexy. sexy is frustration. being right is sexy and being right is frustrating. being frustrated is right. being sexy is frustrating. but writing can be very satisfactory, and a really good written lie is to truth what orgasm is to frustration; because frustration is complicated, and nothing simple was ever really true.

i imagine a monastery, a gathering of students and journeypersons and teachers and masters. a wise elder approaches, to general apprehension. a silence rolls through the crowd like the opposite of a wave, like the end of sound. wonder abounds: she has not imposed herself on the world so very many times. her robe does not flap. she does not leave footprints. when she reaches the chess set in the center of the room she astounds: there are two chairs set on either side of the chess set, but she sits in neither of them. her eyes are like dinner plates, her mouth wooden, lips closed. Her tongue slides out like the swift hand on a grandfather clock, swinging around pursed lips. Her latex-gloved hands pick up the first piece and she begins swallowing them whole, until the board is empty and her stomach is painful. She turns towards the students with pain and suffering in her eyes and vomits. this antsy kasparov, this rubber-gloved grand master, she picks up each sticky piece and wipes it clean until she can strip the gloves and bag the paper. the students applaud. her essay goes largely unread, but it sits on many bookshelves. on most copies there is a sticker on it that covers the first three letters of her name: it is the Pulitzer prize.

i ask without knowing the answer: why praise the falsehood of rare truth? why write as the bulimic sifu, who eats up truth and vomits it back in a gallant mess.  am i to imagine i am not imagining? is my body imposing on you its existence when my eyes make alchemy of sights seen? i hear your complaints like a pestle on wood. i feel you smash and grind the paste into me and make mention of my slowly appearing wooden specks, my imperfections that the paste did not ask for. perhaps your stick tickles the compound and tries to purify it in the disguise of your eyes, motes softly reflected as you add splinters with each swing of your axe, timber. reporter, reporter. see that the conversation between you and me should never be the truth. treat me like a societal problem and just let me lie.

buck

this will be a poetry blog, a word bank, where i will deposit the scattered shards of my mind after a hard days swing of the hammer and see what they are worth. see if they are a lottery, a tottering stack disguised black as a pillar with oil paints that i must merely push over with my finger tips like quarters to die in a greasy pile of dollar bills. I tell myself I am wise as I walk into the convenience store. I tell myself at the counter, "this rube." This rube, this broken toothed banker, this hand in the cash drawer. He may have bought a lottery ticket, but not this one. I tell myself that this is an investment. I tell myself that if worth is made with time, so is money. so is me.

but my worth is written on my paycheck, written in my clothes, written in the cut of my hair, the shape of my beard. Written in my cigarette, my blackheads, in my oily skin. Written in the weird lovely calluses on my hands, my open collar, my $20 pants. Written in my face: I am worth a buck an hour, or a multiple of said dollar. Pay me what you will, you pay for nothing but a third of a man. you pay for nothing but a third of a man this day.