i stick the plaintive letters
of friends and family amidst
the pages of my favorite books
they mark choice passages
concerning our species and the
fate of this ancient universe

one desperate plea for me to
return to the hypocrisy of Christianity rests in my copy of Camus's essay "the Rebel"
tucked nearby Dawkins'
"god Delusion" and Bakunin's
"god and the State" which share
a space with unholy texts on science
art and philosophy on the top row
of my overflowing
alphabetized bookshelf

on a silent Sunday drive home from
church some years ago i
once asked why it was such
a crime to believe in myself
my father imparted it was
an insult to my 
invisible creator
well here’s a ******* to 

my mythological maker
i don’t need you
i’ve got two feet 

planted firmly 
beneath me
i stand strong beside the ones
who resist a culture of misanthropy

i am what i am
a wanderer waylaid in the chasm
of gray matters
i no longer see the world in
shades of black pitch and white snow
your absolute truth is sharp
and out of tune with the
empirical realities of nature
i am not a zealot inculcated
on the drug of elitist predestination
i refute the elixir of everlasting life
heaven is a dream that keeps
us numb to the hellscapes around us

i face the unknown sobered by a
measurable cosmos which wasn't
made just for me to see
but spawned all we call
reality in the throes of a fourteen billion
year old eruption that flung planets
and stars into existence

we are amiss upon a floating rock
adrift in outer-space and instead of
utilizing our capacity for ingenuity to
cultivate a sustainable community
we looked towards the skies
and fashioned gods in our own image
we made god compassionate—a benevolent  
creator who breathed life into nothingness
we made god hideous—a malevolent
dictator deciding the destinies of the unfortunate
we engineered division where once was
sanctity and instigated violence on the
premise that one faith was better
than the other but
they all ring hollow
if you ask me

i am not a sheep and your Christ
is not my shepherd
i am not a timid and pitiable creature
stumbling along after some imaginary master
Jesus of Nazareth was a revolutionary
executed for instigating rebellion
against the Empire of Rome
he said nothing about waging endless war
in fact he urged his followers
to turn the other cheek
i imagine he'd be rolling in his grave
if he could see them know—provided
of course
he hadn't so famously vacated it

riddle me this
why do you hate two men who cherish
each other when your savior said
the greatest commandment was just
to love and be loved by one another
if the etymology of Christian is
Christ follower why not cherish the
lines of red in your holy book
your god bled and died for

even the most progressive of faiths
pale in comparison to the certainty of
evolution or the terror of global climate change
why mythologize that which we don't
understand when history shows that
we only learn more and grow with time
when we question everyone and everything
why dwell in circumstantial metaphysics
when we can just as easily admit
we don't have the faintest clue

i arraign myself against any warped faith
that privileges bigotry and arrogance
i reject the religion of atheism and
buddhism and Christianity
i stand apart from the ethos of
Hindus and edicts of Islam
i have no gods and no masters
my conscience is my only authority
i'm the only one who can
save me from me

in my father's latest letter
packed safely away in Carl
Sagan's "the Demon-Haunted World"
he informs me that i'm
the prodigal son that some
doting deity awaits me
at the gates of heaven
to put a ring on my finger and
slaughter a fattened calf for my
welcome home dinner but
how did an omnipresent god
not deign to ascertain
i'm a vegetarian

when i say
**** the police
i do not feel obligated
to justify or quantify an
assertion that seems
fundamentally apparent to me
i do not find it necessary
to recount the endless horrors and
psychological terrors visited upon
ordinary men and women
nor do i deem it essential
to my personal ethos of
mutual dignity and
profound respect to
needlessly revere those
behind the badges
and the guns
i just see pigs dressed in blue
prove me wrong

i'm still waiting

when i say
**** the police
there's just one thing
i hope you understand
i do not detest the finger on the trigger
nor the hamfisted hand shoveling
Krispy Kream donuts
into a bottomless gullet
nor the fist clutching the baton
pummeling the peaceful protestor
who gave a riot-geared narc
a bouquet of flowers
nor the thumb emitting mace into
the unsuspecting face of a teenage girl
with a hot-pink mohawk

i do not mean offense when i remark
officer
your mustache reminds me of a walrus or
officer
were you the high school bully or
officer
can you direct me to nearest KKK meeting
please and thanks

so when i say
unequivocally
**** the police
know that it is because i detest
a racist misogynistic homophobic
apparatus of institutionalized oppression
that harasses the marginalized
as it butchers youth of color
and masks the misdeeds of its privileged elite in
a fraternity that utterly disregards morality

when i say
**** the police
it's 'cause i realize that absolute power
corrupts absolutely but the same
could be said for even a modicum
of power that twists and churns
and transforms the best of us into
vicious caricatures of humanity
the fissures of hegemony are exposed

as hierarchy crumbles we find inside us
the power to extol truth
even when it's unpopular

and say
**** the police
'cause they're too lazy to use
their words when the State gives
them a gun and
a license to ****
all charges will drop
because the only police who police
the police are the police

when i say
**** the police
it's because the State uses fear
to control its subjects
in hopes we won't realize
we don't need them
they keep us scared of one another
of the demons hiding in the dark
focus our terror on the monsters
lurking underneath our beds rather
than the Feds driving down I4 with
firearms strapped to their hips

when i say
**** the police
it's because it has not
escaped my notice
that the U.S. has the largest
prison population per capita of
any nation in the world due
to draconian laws governing
the use and abuse of substances
and i may be straight edge but
i'll be the first to point out
that the State's manufacturing new slaves
with its arbitrary arrests over ***

so i say
**** the police
because i remember
my brothers and sisters
who swine stole from this Earth
though i wager i'd never meet them
i'm certain their so-called criminal behavior
certainly did not merit an execution

and contrary to popular belief
black lives matter
so pull your head out of the sand
with that
all lives matter
hog-wash and open your ears for just a second

brother Michael Brown shot
down in Ferguson for walking
along the middle of the street

Eric Garner
strangled by a narc
accused of selling loose
cigarettes after dark

Sandra Bland failed to use her turn
signal and we discovered her later
hanging from a rope
like Roxanne Gay said
even if she killed herself
white hands are still locked around her throat

Trayvon Martin dared to wear a hoodie
and trespass in an affluent community
for failing to return to the ghetto
a vigilante **** sent him to the morgue

twelve-year-old Tamir Rice
played cops-n-robbers in his lawn  
no one stopped to tell him
its the boys-n-blue
who're robbing young kids of their lives
with bullets packed tight in their 9's

over 860 men women and children
killed by thugs draped in red white and blue
in these first 9 months of 2015 alone

so when i say
**** the police
i say so out of a sincere conviction
that there will be no peace until we get
some ******* justice
and i know the State Department's supplying
our masters with leftover gear from its
exorbitant multi-trillion dollar wars
M-16s tear gas flashbangs,
body armor HumVees tanks
rubber bullets surveillance kits and small arms
to suppress dissent and smash
lawful assembly with violence
but when they order us to cease and disperse
or suffer arrest
we'll have three words poised on our lips
**** the police

we labor under an oppressive thumb
not realizing the very leaders
we exalt will use that power to
hold us down

we've armed them with
the greatest of weapons
blind conformity
empty apathy
unquestioning obedience
what we believe in is a puppet

as our so-called democracy devolves
we increase in callousness
masses designed with a singular purpose
to extinguish original thought

accept or die
embrace or be ostracized
belabor the point
that your purpose is to labor forever
another slave along the chain
another cog in the machine
bent-kneed
stooped before some
corporate conglomerate
a faceless superpower
pulling the strings behind the scenes

politicians bought and paid for
shouldering the burdens of the
Fortune 500 companies
who helped them purchase their office
beholden to back alley deals
and smoke and mirror gimmicks

artists traded rebellion for comfort
now they ply their craft for profit
to appease the brainwashed masses a
morally—and financially—bankrupt populace

they catalogue our every thought
metadata ensnared in the dragnet
mass surveillance a tool to bend the whims
of the people to their rulers

we **** black kids in Ferguson
as they walk down the middle of the street
shoot 'em down as the snack on skittles
and sip Arizona ice teas
they forbid us to feed the homeless
lock us in a jail cell if we dare to disobey
city ordinances designed to keep the
City Beautiful looking beautiful
but i see beyond the thin facade

expose war crimes
thanks for your service
Chelsea Manning
that'll be 35 years in federal penitentiary
hack a surveillance network spying on
activists and protesters
can't have that
that'll be 10 years at State
Jeremy Hammond
blow the whistle on the panopticon
thanks Edward Snowden
but we've grown to adore our own shackles

fear
24/7/365
fear this fear that
fear god fear death
fear Muslims fear blacks
just don't fear the rich white straight
males in their 4k suits and crooked smiles
pay the white-collar Wall St. Bankers no mind
the 1% who've left us all behind
as they lurk in the shadows
ruining everything

a fearful electorate will bow to the
whims of its masked dictatorship
and march without thought to the beat
of the war drums

**** them
**** all of them
ISIS Pakistan Iran Syria
all the Muslim savages in countries
whose names we can't even pronounce
render weapons to tyrannic despots
so we can pretend we
don't have blood on our own hands
torture extrajudicial assassination
extraordinary rendition drones bombing
civilians in record numbers
all cards we've stowed up our sleeves
in a war that is designed to never end
fight terrorism with terrorism
revenge not justice
but if our army is abusing children
then who the **** are the bad guys

confront the ambivalence that
roars like machine gun fire
violence is never the answer
and i refuse to stand by and watch
as we wreak havoc upon this earth

our leaders are liars
our gods are frauds
we're going to have to save ourselves

the answer does not rest above
a utopic afterlife in the clouds is a farce
we've been led like sheep to the slaughter
obedience and reverence have crippled us
if we want heaven
we'll have to raise hell

stand in solidarity with our brothers and sisters
in direct action cooperatives
nonviolent civil disobedience
insurrection against the State
anarchy is the answer

beat your swords to plowshares
and seek peace

i woke to a ceiling fan
humming above my head
a disjointed cadence obfuscated
by a couple loose screws that caused it to
shake and to shudder and
splutter its song

i couldn't fall back asleep

i went for a walk instead
watched a boy in oversized overalls
cuffed about his ankles
cuss and shake his head in
lament as he kicked a crumpled
aluminum can across sun-baked cement

a scrawny teenage girl smoked a roach
on her front porch step
she wore a scowl as i admired
the cigarette butts scattered across her lawn
she acknowledged me with bloodshot eyes
that seemed as though they'd seen too much

the St. John's River brushed the shoreline
furtive as a lover's butterfly kisses
and whispered sweet nothings
as a garbage barge drifted past
i could smell the rotten filth
rich folks had discarded and i
imagine i regarded that same
vessel with a different expression
than the homeless man who sat
on a park bench nearby feeding
the crusts of his sandwich to a
cluster of pigeons

on my way back the
skinny girl called out to me
she walked down from her balcony and
asked me if i wanted some ***
but the words
no, thank you  
caught in my throat
i couldn't miss the fresh scars on her wrists
or the pain in her eyes masked by
youthful defiance and
i turned from her wordless remembering
ignorance is bliss

i wish i could remember how to forget

happiness habitually tends toward apathy
permitting brainlessness to fester in the
throes of misanthropy while indefatigable
entropy saps the mind and heart
robbing the joyful of their shared humanity

emotion's heady debris linger in hapless
inanity while infatuation produces a stupor
unmatched by the strongest of spirits
reducing the compassionate to one-sided
and ambivalent caricatures of divinity

have we been deceived
force-fed untruth from birth
on celluloid silver screens
did we barter literature for
delusions of grandeur
in frivolous narratives manufactured
to distract from reality or detract
from the movement to abolish hateful
programs perpetuating poverty

or has cynicism left me jaded hating
that which is most precious in the human
experience because past horrors and
present woes cannot permit the possibility
of future redemption to overcome these
walls i've built around my dismembered soul

as is often the case i see the answer's far
from crystal clear it's amorphous and contorted
caught somewhere between two distant antitheses
which create a spectrum of relative ambiguity
amidst a reality neither certain nor secure

nevertheless i'll try to unearth the truth
whatever it may be and wherever it lies buried
harboring the knowledge in the back of my skull
that there may not even be such a thing
i'll salvage courage from
the wreckage of wistfulness
a wanderer waylaid in the chasm of gray matters

count each and every grain i
cherish them all the same
they're the only friends i have
across this endless plane of
granular particles kicked up
every so often by a storm
that shifts this desert from one
spectrum to the next like
filtering time through the sieve
of some infinite hourglass

i will drive this lumbering beast
across theses seas of sand
reclaim what they stole through duplicity
coax this hunk of junk to life
if need be to outrun the
lingering fear of inadequacy
i don't know god but i met the devil
i've been his captive for 7,000 days
a hostage of hellions obsessed
with a decadent religion of misanthropy

the shifting wind-swept dunes
my only markers on this winding road
a roguish rebel defying hegemony
manifest in maleficent misogyny
i'll strive to live not just survive in this
endless wasteland hope may yet arise

illusion festers at the
altar of apathy we
sacrifice our intellect
for luxury items
woe-filled slaves chained
to hypocrisy

if this is what grows in the
absence of thought—weeds
spread out to choke all semblance
of hope—sew my eyelids to my scalp
i'll sleep no more no nightmare
is more terrible than this
reality we must endure

stretched out across this wasteland
we built temples to worship
finance bathed in our own arrogance
we fancied ourselves gods through
deicide and accepted the
inheritance that gave us such a throne

measure out the violence in Biblical
proportions spread like fire
to every corner of the globe
cover the map in a sea of
ash and smoke white phosphorous
raining from the sky like manna
on all the forgotten children
anguishing in third-world exile

we are the arbiters of our own demise
drunken bloated ignorant harbingers
reviled for our revelry of orgastic negativity
plunging the Earth into the sixth
extinction that surely spells
the end of our finite kind

some sentient race may yet witness
our only home caught in the
death-grip of its sole intellectual organism
as life ebbs from her lonely pale blue eyes
winking in and out of existence
from hundreds of lightyears far far away

no telling whether such a recollection
viewed through the chasm of space-time
might offer a mirror to some species
possessed of less self-destructive
tendencies devoid of suicidal mentalities
a warning sign to all the legions spread
across the galaxy:

do not follow in our footsteps