Miller High Life and/or PBR: for getting drunk for cheap.

Steel Reserve: for getting drunk for cheap and going to jail.

I remember that day,
complete loss of control,
feeling more than just drunk
more than upset at the position I found myself in.

I remember the self destruction
and the understanding that it was an experience
that I needed to have in order
to have something called legitimacy maybe?

Handcuffs are very, very uncomfortable
but so is waking up on a couch in
a building full of cockroaches
to realize that everything that brought
you there was your own fault.

I will never know why I was so angry
will never understand why I was such a monster that day
unless I give myself the excuse of thinking
that I had lost all hope in anything.

All I can say with any certainty
is that if somebody ever dares tell me
ever again that because I'm white
I don't know what it's like to be
picked up off the street, they are
sadly mistaken.

I'd like to tell a true story to you, dear readers. It's not exactly a nice story, but it's one I've only told to a few, so I think the time has come to make it public, especially since I know that the only person involved that would read it is me. This is a story that has changed my life, for good or ill, some experience that curdled my perception of how the world I live in works.

One night, years ago, I wound up at a house party in beautiful St. Augustine, and I was sober when I got there, very late, as I had promised to be the dd. But, we walked from the dorms back to Riberia Street, so I had no responsibilities once we got there. So, while drinking and partaking of other choice substances, I met the now famous Emily, she who I first started really writing for, she who set me free from some pointless idea of what was necessary. Dear God she had perfect *******, and could kiss like French writers wished their wives or lovers could kiss. I fell in love with her that night....and also was wounded at the same time.

Emily had three friends, a Latina from Miami called Natasha ironically, a White girl from up North named Lauren Ruotollo, and another chick from up that way who introduced herself as Kiki. I was in the middle of a conversation with Emily, when I had to ***. So, naturally I walked off the porch and did my business on the side of that house, and while standing there I looked to my left and saw a random dude shoving his thing into a girl's mouth propped against a tree. I thought nothing of it in that moment, and went back to talking to that perfect Emily.

What felt like hours or honestly was only minutes later, on the back porch with my tongue in Emily's mouth and my hand up her shirt, Natasha and Lauren found us; hunting for Kiki. I found her out back, not ten yards from where Emily and I were standing. She was the girl taking it hard from random *******, who left her with not even a thank you. Her skirt and ******* were racked up over her stomach, and when I picked her up, she coughed up *** all over my shirt. I carried her to Natasha's car and put her inside, yelling to God that He owed me one. Emily, Natasha, Lauren and Kiki then rolled off into the wee morning hours, and a little piece of my soul died.

I went back inside that house and couldn't find that empty *******. So I snorted an entire 8 ball and took off my *** covered shirt in the middle of Riberia and burned that ****** then and there.

So when you ask me why I have some problems that didn't come from the Army, I'll tell you this story.

My whole adult life,
I've been running into people
unexpectedly on street corners
and having somewhat profound
conversations in odd languages.

Consider the guy I spoke with in broke *** English
at the bus station in Jacksonville,
or the girl from Kiev I happened upon in
a very expensive gentleman's club in Seattle.

Herat was also a very strange place to find
oneself in, Dari and Pashto and Russian and God
knows what else might be run into.

The wonderful thing about all of the
ridiculous places I've found myself in at
one time or another over the very hungry years
is that no matter what language or background
we came from, if there was ***** we got along.

Arise children of the fatherland
The day of glory has arrived
Against us tyranny's
****** standard is raised
Listen to the sound in the fields
The howling of these fearsome soldiers
They are coming into our midst
To cut the throats of your sons and consorts

To arms citizens Form your battalions
March, march
Let impure blood
Water our furrows

What do they want this horde of slaves
Of traitors and conspiratorial kings?
For whom these vile chains
These long-prepared irons?
Frenchmen, for us, ah! What outrage
What methods must be taken?
It is us they dare plan
To return to the old slavery!

What! These foreign cohorts!
They would make laws in our courts!
What! These mercenary phalanxes
Would cut down our warrior sons
Good Lord! By chained hands
Our brow would yield under the yoke
The vile despots would have themselves be
The masters of destiny

Tremble, tyrants and traitors
The shame of all good men
Tremble! Your parricidal schemes
Will receive their just reward
Against you we are all soldiers
If they fall, our young heros
France will bear new ones
Ready to join the fight against you

Frenchmen, as magnanimous warriors
Bear or hold back your blows
Spare these sad victims
That they regret taking up arms against us
But not these ****** despots
These accomplices of Bouillé
All these tigers who pitilessly
Ripped out their mothers' wombs

We too shall enlist
When our elders' time has come
To add to the list of deeds
Inscribed upon their tombs
We are much less jealous of surviving them
Than of sharing their coffins
We shall have the sublime pride
Of avenging or joining them

Drive on sacred patriotism
Support our avenging arms
Liberty, cherished liberty
Join the struggle with your defenders
Under our flags, let victory
Hurry to your manly tone
So that in death your enemies
See your triumph and our glory!

What city do you live in?
What town?
What hamlet?
What village?
What homestead out in the middle of supposed nowhere?

Where in this once great land could you live
and be able to say to yourself "No, I haven't
felt the pain of trying to provide for myself
and for those whom I love?"

Where could you be, from West Coast
to the East, and not at least wonder during your
work week once, what is happening all around us?

Or do you sit in relative comfort,
as I do, fighting only personal battles
and yet knowing deep down inside
that there is something not quite right.

Feeling perhaps there might be something wrong
not with yourself, but with where you live
and that maybe your supposed failings as a person
have nothing whatsoever to do with you
but rather, with the land you live in?

1) "An unstable political situation, marked by sharp social divisions and usually, but not always, by a foundering or stagnant economy." Check.

2) " A political objective, based on firm moral and ideological grounds, that can be understood and accepted by the majority as the overriding cause of the insurgency, desirable in and of itself and worthy of any sacrifice." We have yet to achieve that cohesiveness among the various factions and break-away groups within our society.

3) "An oppressive government, with which no political compromise is possible." As yet to be determined. The situation remains fluid.

4) " Some form of revolutionary political organization, capable of providing dedicated and consistent leadership toward the accepted goal." As yet, there is no organization that can muster the popular support or bring disparate groups together to make any sort of legal headway against our common enemy.

And where indeed have all those slim lines
of genuine verse gone?

What has become of the Garden wrought of dreams
and a love so keen that it could barely be spoken of?

Wherefore gone the desires for quiet words
and innocent love-making?

I will tell you that they have been drowned
by the cries for justice gone so long unheard.

They have been swallowed up by the indifference
of a nation so engrossed in consumption that the world outside
our borders and within only exists on television.

But the real fact of the matter is that I am ashamed,
I am ashamed of myself most of all,
for if I truly cared as much as I say I do,
I'd have stopped writing altogether by now,
and started doing more....

I'd be reaching out to whoever would listen
to whomever I could find
to those of us that don't want to wake up one day
and realize only too late
that we are all in fact slaves.