did you know
if you earn $34k a year or more
you're in the top 1% of all the world

if that's the joke then
where's the punch-line
did i miss it somewhere
in the attempt to justify
political suicide

how could that appease
those of us groveling on our knees
living hand-to-mouth
from paycheck to paycheck
as the world's 80 richest billionaires
who control 50% of the world's wealth
do whatever they **** well please

by all means
fact check me if you don't trust my
ridiculously overpriced master's degree
in literary cultural and textual studies
because let's face it
we've all heard the jokes
an English diploma means jack-****
in this morally bankrupt economy
where literacy is literally repressed as a
way of keeping the downtrodden oppressed

a healthy discussion where we ask
critical questions is the natural synthesis
of any democratic debate and
challenging each other is a stellar
way to cultivate the intellectually irate but
let's not divide and instigate after all
unnecessary altercations over
trivial factoids only distract
us from the realists' explanation

we are ******
the world is burning all around us
200 species perish every single day
as we exorcise fossil fuels
and melt the polar ice caps
pumping oil into gas-guzzling SUVs
and CO2 into the air we share as

we poison the wellsprings of hope
with idiosyncratic politicians
who force idiotic semantics
down our throats until
we choke and splutter and mutter
beneath our breath about
how things used to be and how
we'd be happier if we just followed
passively like gentle sheep adhering to
the edicts and decrees of the
corporocratic oligarchy

see
i'm not standing here defaming
or complaining on the contrary
i'm stalwart in proclaiming that
if we don't pause to consider
the way we're fanning
the flames razing this
planet we will no longer
have a globe to call our home

with all due respect
there's no chance in hell
that i'll just sit back and laugh
while the Empire grows and
consumes life liberty and happiness

gorging itself on the apathy of
the well-adjusted privileged white kids
who don't blink twice at the
homeless transgender teenager
hiding out on the stoop of a
fair-trade coffee house to avoid
the Florida rain or the corpse
of a drowned emaciated Syrian toddler
buried face-down in the sand
or the arrest of Sandra Bland for
failing to use a
turn signal or put
out her cigarette
tell me how such
a mundane gesture of
defiance could warrant
the admonishment that
tied a noose around her neck

the 1% is not a people group
it is an idea nurtured at the behest
of capitalist demagogues
that inundate our culture with
fantasies of American exceptionalism
let's face it the only thing exceptional
about this lackluster nation
is the fact that we have the world's
largest prison population per capita
due in no small part
to vindictive laws that target
the poor and clap them in chains

it isn't Us vs. Them
that is the nefarious toxin that
brainwashes and destroys
community and philanthropy
if we would truly call ourselves
lovers of humanity than we must
muster the humility to admit that
we all have certain degrees
of light and dark
each of us on a spectrum
oscillating in stark contrast

it is We the People vs. the State
that three-tiered hydra that
guards the estates of the elite
and leaves others starving out
in the streets
a system predicated on
setting the classes against themselves
a self-perpetuating leviathan
looming god-like overhead
nurtured by the treatises of
outdated 18th century philosophers

the social contract is a lie
i didn't sign my life away
on some dotted line
so that my freedom and
independence could be usurped
by the stupendous guise of
capitalism masquerading as
the harbinger of harmony

we're not demanding economic
equality but fiscal equity
a concept that each man
and woman and child can
live and love in
comfort and in health and
worry not for the future
generations because a system
of slavery no longer exists
to inundate their lives
with shallow labor
'till they perish

if we sit idly and watch our
culture continue to chortle and
spiral into the idolatry of political celebrity
we may forget that the people
have the capacity to
reclaim our stolen dignity
hoarded by the specter of power

Foucault once wrote that dominance
cultivates resistance and i am the
expression of that latter people's movement
one aspect of an anthemic chorus
singing in unilateral unison as
the glass castles of the State come crashing down

equal to each and every sister
brother to seven billion
rebel with a cause
now
tell me
will you join
your voice with ours
'cause trust me we need
all the help that we can get

aren't we just arguing semantics
like we always do
our hearts race at a
breakneck pace there are
two sides to every story but
even two is
far too few

we're spinning in aimless
circles hopeless amiss without
a clue as to how we ought
to navigate this disparate landscape
of emotional turmoil
that soars at moments in the clouds
above Mt. Everest peaking exuberantly  
at stars through thinning atmospheres
before plummeting to an abyss
darker and deeper than Mariana's
Trench on a journey to the center of
this floating rock we call Earth

we carry our emotional baggage on the
roundtrip non-stop four and a
half billion year long sojourn
though time and space
weathering calamities unlike
any epoch ever known to sentient life

the five great extinctions snuffed
out the light of trillions of organisms
vanished without so much as a trace
and yet this sole sensation of
depravity has me spiraling like a
kamikaze hell-bound and split
apart like a molecule undergoing
mitosis i feel as if i'm being ripped
from you and i do not have the
answers to all these questions poised
inside my mind floating about

not unlike secrets in a glass case
the steel claw descends
and tries to clasp onto
one thought from the trove but
slips loose and my tenuous grasp
on reality skips hand-in-
hand with it free-falling in slow
motion right through the
cracks in the floor

i know this might
sound abstract or absurd but not a
night drifts past when i don't wish
it was you i was holding against my
chest rather than this lumpy pillow that
lies cold still and motionless

after we first kissed i remember
thinking you tasted faintly of
pomegranate and i can't forget the
sandpaper tiles of the roof on our bare
skin or the not-so-quiet gasps
that slipped past your lips as
your hips clenched tightly about my wrist
a wet warmth spread out released in
willing ecstasy to ease my curiosity
a faint scent of alcohol lingering in
the sweet sweat of your ******
my heart still starts to shake and shudder with
a sort of anxious bliss at just the thought of it

and while you insist
you're polyamorous
i see nothing short of the
universe gleaming solely within your
cosmic eyes and i nurse the quiet
knowledge that we might
never share another
night so i will try my best
to set this love aside

yet for better or worse
i nurse the private hope
that we'll be partners-in-crime
smashing the Patriarchy and
vanquishing capitalism and traveling
the world but for now
all i want is to hold you through
the darkness and drift asleep to the
cadence of your heartbeat
one last time

bumper-stickers of crosses
commemorating a Jewish hippie anarchist
are flanked by mantras of violence the hallmarks
of ambivalent compliance celebrating
barbarism the State’s chief contrivance

my fill-in-the-blank is an American serviceman
note here that it doesn’t matter if the individual in
question identifies as male female or non-conforming
they are a service man as if the
erasure of gendered complexities somehow
appeases the intricacies of humanity
beneath a blanket statement of hyper-masculinity but
i digress

my fill-in-the-blank is an American serviceman
reinforcing the spiritualization of militarization
in syncophantic intontations of
god bless our soldiers
and only ours
forget about all the other men and women
and children cursed by the pox of
foreign aggression and endless war
they are not our concern
on the contrary
they are just an obstacle in our path
a minor speed-bump we must summit by summoning
chauvinism and stepping on the throats of our enemies

dominance is our souls’ sole objective
we don’t have time for notions that might
challenge our hallowed perspectives or our
holy war in the most sacred spot in all
the world we cannot be deterred by the images of
broken bloodied babies on Mediterranean shores
‘cause the decimated dead with decapitated heads
only fan the flames of conquest
cultivated by the corrupt

i suppose i shouldn’t be so surprised
after all you did adopt an
instrument of torture to remember your
savior by when a dove of peace and
fraternity would’ve sufficed

your distinctly American Jesus stands shirtless
with a chiseled six-pack in camouflage cargo shorts
wielding a double-barreled sawed-off
shotgun in each hand he’s
white and rich and arrogant
as he trades blows with ISIS and
sits in consternate judgement over godless atheists
barking out damnation from the right-hand of
the lord our god the king of kings
salvation reserved for the predestined elect
necessarily limited to Americans his
chosen elite in their promised land

if only he could see you now
that same martyr you bless with one breath
before spewing vitriolic hatred with the next
what would the prince of peace
riding on a donkey
have to say to
bigots racists and homophobes

would he find the
stones you spew and shove
them back down your throat
the way i’d like to

no i somehow imagine that if your Christ returned
he’d interpose himself between you and the LGBTQ
and suffer the brunt of your bitterness
turning black and blue beneath the blows
willing to die for the least of these crying
abba father
why have you forsaken me

if the Nazarene came back he’d
overturn ballot-boxes in houses of worship
masquerading as venues for the 2016 election
he’d realize Sanders is no socialist
that Clinton is grotesquely hawkish and
i like to think he’d tell that fascist Trump
to *******

he would stand instead with the poor
and oppressed with men and women
of color at Black Lives Matter protests
smoke some quality kush with the dejected rejects
and comfort the back-alley addicts with
a soft word or warm hug to serve
as a reminder that the Kingdom of
Heaven is not above but is
built brick-by-brick in the day-to-day
interactions of compassion between ordinary
humans with an extraordinary capacity to
counteract the lethargy of apathy that
pacifies the populace and turns us into
cowed wage-slaves bowing in acquiescence

the rabbi would march to the gates
of the white house
and occupy the front lawn
to triumphant shouts that
rendered unto American Caesars
precisely what they deserve

a non-violent mass resistance of
leaderless and highly coordinated
civilly disobedient dissidents who
value dissent and populist movements to
voice their disillusionment at abject
apparatuses consolidating dominance
in order to remind the 99% that
in the words of one romantic

we will rise like lions after slumber
in unvanquishable number
we’ll shake our chains to earth like dew
for we are many and they are few

yet as much as i am loathe to admit it
Jesus of Nazareth was executed two
thousand some odd years ago
your god is dead and he cannot save us

if we intend to contend with the forces of
depravity that inculcate humanity with
putrescent fantasies of self-aggrandized zealotry
we cannot sit on our hands or
bury our heads in the sand and
wait for someone else to lead us to redemption

salvation keeps us looking down and shuffling
along suffering chained to our lack of imagination
rather than looking straight ahead
into the eyes of our taskmasters
and irrevocably declaring
we will lead ourselves

we have it in us to build a better world in
the shell of the old and raise a
culture of equality and liberty
provided we don’t buy into
all we’re told but
if such a dream could ever
triumph we must find the courage to
brave the cold winters of repression
that surely lay ahead and pour gasoline
on this ugly specter haunting our planet
before lighting the torch and tossing it
onto the detritus of misanthropy

watch it burn

come
huddle close now
gather ‘round
keep warm
if we stick together
we can brave the storm gathering
even now to purge our
peaceful non-compliance

as we carry the conflagration
to every nation to
each corner of the globe
we will overthrow the
ghost of governance

simultaneously i am
my own deity and enemy
at once a cancer and its cure
the sheep and the wolf
a king and a fool
subservient to none
yet obligated to all
a series of contradictions
and oxymorons played out
to define complexity in simplicity
purposelessness in post-modern artistry

a cornerstone on dry land but
sinking down in life's quicksand i
am defined in tandem with my
community but i also stand apart
independently spouting a philosophy
of non-violent civil disobedience
predicated on the heart informing and
the mind responding in kind
and my rebellion may or
may not be limited to
peaceful protest and direct action
it might also include
burning flags and bombing buildings
symbols of oligarchy come crashing down

i see utopic potential in the dystopian
narratives on Barnes & Noble's bookshelves
carry the fires of Prometheus to shake the
apathy of false hopes and leave desiccated
idolatry in the shallow graves that serve
as mouths spewing hatred and homophobia

i am an anarchist with Messianic tendencies
the infamous Nazarene
died defying Rome's empire and
i'll decry American chauvinism on my death-bed
born and bred in the home of
two happily-married conservative Christians
emerged a nonbeliever
i'll resist until the end

earning my master's in literary cultural
and textual studies and i've been told that
i'm prone to sophisticated soliloquies and
that i have a robust vocabulary yet
people always ask me why
my favorite word is ****
and i suppose it has something to do with
its versatility vibrancy and vivacious vicissitudes

i am in love with a girl with
forest-fire hair follicles that burn
almost as bright as the compassion she
nurtures in her chest a rebel girl
in a patriarchal world wielding middle-
fingers as easily as warm hugs
i adore that she is polyamorous
even if i have eyes for only her

i lead a democratic classroom
by modeling leaderlessness
a professor and a student
fellow learners use
my first name 'cause
we're one and the same
i'd be ashamed if i adopted
the illusion of authority and
tried in vain to tame the virtue of
liberty latent in every one of my students

i am my own damnation
an island unto myself
beset with the black plague of  
self-doubt drowning in the ocean of
delusion bereft of self-determination
betrayed the man in the mirror
i am my own adversary and accuser
judge jury and executioner
i signed my own death warrant

and i am my own redemption
i am the savior nailed to the cross  
nothing and no one
can stand in my path
i am the arbiter of free-will
the harbinger of hope and i
will vanquish the lies that
choke my throat like nooses of rope
and tie myself a lasso to pull down
the moon and sun and travel
aimlessly throughout the galaxy
as i did once
from star-dust i was
born and to dust i shall
inexorably return

simultaneously i am
my own deity and enemy
at once a cancer and its cure
the sheep and the wolf
a king and a fool
subservient to none
yet obligated to all
a series of contradictions
and oxymorons played out
to define complexity in simplicity
purposelessness in post-modern artistry

the invisible hand is in my pocket
pilfering everything
and there's nothing i can do
to stop it from robbing me blind

it does not guide it only destroys
personal expression under the
whims of an outmoded model of economics
capitalism
a philosophy that subscribes
to the metaphysical conclusion
that a spiritual malady
plagues every human heart
a harsh chorus that rings like a melody
of triumph in the multi-million dollar
mansions of the 1%

convinced we're born selfish
it seeks to reward us for our own malpractice
an edict predicated on social darwinism
that forestalls the possibility of future charity
as it drowns in the throes
of misanthropy and butchers any hope
of philanthropic community or basic humanity
to vanquish our more maleficent impulses

relegated to paying taxes
to ensure the illusion of security
while our money finances endless
war and police brutality rather than
healthcare or education
they know if they keep us sick and dumb
they can get away with ******

if the population shirks in horror
from the looming specter of terrorism
they can justify ubiquitous surveillance
that robs us of our right to
self-determination but
people should not be afraid of their governments
governments should be afraid of their people

they say we can't be trusted
that this is for our own good
but i'll call their bluff that
bull on Wall St. is full of ****
and like a matador i'll entice it to
lower its horns and charge
when itsjust a hairsbreadth away
i'll turn to one side and let it skewer
the slave-driver raising his whip behind me
that same skulking shadow that turns
veterans into homeless wanderers begging
for loose change in Central Park
a pale horse haunting the aspirations
of college students it
leaves the poor and
oppressed shivering after dark and
overburdens broken backs
god doesn't hold up the world
like Atlas we shoulder the globe

now watch us shift the weight

brought down by the people you tried to suppress
this is not some petty expression of vengeance
but the rallying cry of a dream deferred
exploding out to meet your injustice
mark my words

we're taking over the world

a black flag is suspended
above the garden in
my front lawn
it flexes in dawn's sweet  
breeze and ***** in the
mid-morning sun then snaps
in afternoon gusts
before weathering the storms of
early dusk and ultimately subsiding
into the relative serenity of an
uncertain twilight

a black flag prepared to
face the elements once more
at a moment's notice

even now i hear it slapping and cracking
as if it were possessed by
the manifestation of the people's will
an outcry indignant at the indignities
humankind and this good earth have suffered
at the hands of faceless men and
women who succumb to
the illusion of dominance

i take that black flag down
whenever i go out my front door
i fold it up into a tiny handkerchief
tuck it neatly in my breast-pocket
where it rests mere millimeters
from my heart as i do what i can
to teach my students to live
with such vibrant tenacity
that their very existence is
an act of rebellion

i wear the black flag around my neck
every time i go to shows it
soars behind me and i
feel superhuman as i stand and
sing in tandem with a myriad of
friends in the throes of some
melodious cadence harmonizing with
down-tuned guitars and pile-driving percussion
the rest of the galaxy and i lose track of
space and time adrift  
in the rhythms of resistance

i tie the black flag around my head
to keep back the sweat beading about my
brow every time i bend down and
break my back once more for my
corporate overlords who can no longer
see the forest for the trees let alone
be somehow appeased by the simple joy
of sharing books with random strangers
their eyes are glazed green with envy
and i wonder when they sold their
souls to the devils on capitol hill

i wave the black flag at protests
as we occupy the streets and
feed the homeless and cheer
wildly for complete liberty
in time with the beat of drums
our footsteps aiding in a
procession that shakes the houses of
decadence capitalists lurk within and
causes the corrupt to tremble
with trepidation as they turn to one
rich white neighbor after the other
and ask one another
what have we done

like no flag before it and no banner since
the black flag waves all humanity away
from the precipice upon which we lean
so perilously teetering over the edge
flirting with death inches away from
a bottomless abyss

its blackness stands in stark contrast
from the blue hues that evoke oceanic
divides or the red streaks symbolizing
bloodshed or the white blotches that elicit
some tacit implication
of supremacy and exceptionalism

it is black
whole and uniform
indicative not of segregation and
national barriers but of unity
universal fraternity that comes not
from conformity but out of a genuine
desire to recognize the inherent dignity
of all humanity—even those with whom
we might vehemently disagree

there is not a shred of
cowardice in the black flag
it means no surrender
it recognizes no authority
it is not subservient to a titular country
but predicated on the principle that
freedom equality and responsibility
are not trigger words for
selling successful political campaigns
but are the natural and inherent virtues
that make us sentient human beings

the black flag defies
the oligarchic minority and
returns once more to the wellspring
of individuality and community and in
doing so produces a space where
originality is the centripetal force

power to the people now
invert the stars and stripes before
turning them to fuel for the fires
in our chests like Prometheus we wrest
divinity from the gods masquerading above
us in the halls of congress and the senate
white houses are not temples of worship
we have it in us to create a community
where we don't need representation
where we determine our own future

revolution is a lived concept

a black flag is suspended
above the garden in
my front lawn
it flexes in dawn's sweet  
breeze and ***** in the
mid-morning sun then snaps
in afternoon gusts
before weathering the storms of
early dusk and ultimately subsiding
into the relative serenity of an
uncertain twilight

there is a nascent impulse that
echoes in every heartbeat
living within our blood
to regard one another with the new eyes
science has built for each of us
to see the world independently
unaligned with ignorant ideology
untainted by nefarious nationality
but nurtured rather on the premise that reality
is the faculty of the mentally complete
who realize if we don't pause in our
crusade to exterminate each other we will
ultimately deplete what it is that makes us

sentient beings possessed with the will to
determine our own future
divorced from the vestiges of arbitrary
authority we might still muster the courage
to reject this putrid dichotomy that inundates
every aspect of our humanity with utter
lies and disjointed hypocrisies

we dare feign innocence when
blood saturates our hands
from the drones bombing
Yemen to the murdered children in Pakistan
our politicians are manufacturing new enemies
with every shot that rings out above
blood-soaked foreign lands
our taxes are their supply
endless war is their demand

it's written in our hallowed declaration
of independence which—of
late—seems groundless and impotent
that each of us are intrinsically
entitled to life and liberty
and the pursuit of happiness and that
it is not merely our right but our
obligation to abolish this
representative republic so destructive
to those ends

anarchy is our next great adventure

after all it seems glaringly clear to
me that there are few distinguishable
differences between the eighteenth century
monarchy and our present day corporate oligarchy
the interests of the people are mitigated to
pitched elections between two indistinguishable
political parties that infuse our world not with
democracy but with hegemony
they're content to watch the world rot

this is not the land of the free
it hasn't been since bison roamed
across midwestern plains and
Native Americans communed with
the Mother we all share
everything changed when white
puritans fleeing persecution
spread religion like a festering ulcer oozing
poison into the zeitgeist psyche
a hive-mind mentality that fosters
brainlessness and stifles free inquiry
gods gold and glory

we need to learn to disobey before
it's too late to erase the mistakes of
the apathetic elite who've apprehended
our liberty and co-opted our ingenuity
for projects feeding capitalist insanity

we must rekindle the insurrectionary spirit of
the creative, dedicated minority
who rose up in the 50's and 60's and
fought not with fists and guns
but with words and deeds
against war and poverty and
white supremacist patriarchy

nurture the embers and fan the flames
of the Black Lives Matter
organizers swarming the stages of
defunct politicians like Hillary Clinton
and Bernie Sanders who propagate
the status quo
pour gasoline on the fires raging
in the camps of Occupy
in Oakland and Wall St.
our modern day dissidents serve time in federal
penitentiaries for blowing the whistle
languishing in exile half-a-world away
they wear Guy Fawkes masks and hack
anonymously from the deep web
exposing state secrets and war crimes
sometimes they look a lot like you and
you'd best believe they look like me

no longer can we trust self-styled
leaders of the free world
if we labor to cultivate our
own communities that vaunt
authenticity above authority and
integrity instead of inanity
perhaps then we might recognize that
the impetus rests within the crux
of self-acceptance
and we all will say in unison
it starts with me