she has eyes like ice
and a mohawk the shade
of bubblegum

she's an artist
and a misfit
outfitted in
ethereal attire
the flows off her
alabaster skin
like wisps of shadow
or tuffs of smoke

she chews on her lower
lip when she thinks you
aren't looking and has
a nervous habit of
biting her nails
the polish is chipped
and cracked in some
places and sorely
needs a new coat

at first glance you
might think her fragile
but the subtle smirk
that tugs at either side
of her mouth belies a
quiet confidence
a take-no-prisoners
sensibility
a ****-it-all
attitude

not grounded in apathy
but nurtured in non-compliance
her lack of conformity is more
than some youthful
stage of defiance

she is disobedient and
everyone says they're afraid of her
that she scares them senseless
but i kissed her once and
we stayed friends after
i think she knows me better
than i know myself

she stands in the corner
of seedy concert halls as
cigarettes leave a haze above
the heads of pre-teens and
old metal-heads nurse their
alcoholic beverages
everyone pretends she is
somewhere—or even
someone—else

but not me
we stand together
sometimes we hold hands
and i catch her smiling
out of the corner of my eye
from time to time

they say you'll never forget
where you were on 9/11
i was nine
i sat in the kitchen
and watched the television
play out the violence hour after hour
my child-like mind conflated the Two Towers
in Tolkien's literary fantasy
with these acts of misanthropy  
and i was taught at the dinner table
that very evening
that all of life could be reduced
to capital letters defining a
cosmic struggle of Good vs. Evil

and yet
regardless of their affiliation
on this defunct
political spectrum of
left left
left right left
politicians canonize a legacy of
injustice and oppression and
in order to suppress
democratic expression
they propagate the notion
that dissent is treason

because the wars we wage are blessed
by the sagely insight of rich old men
who sit safely in mansions protected by
picket fences as white as their skin
while they play off our emotions and
turn us into thoughtless sheep
content to stomach the whims of
politicians propagating vengeance

i will speak this out even
when my voice shakes
because i have seen the hypocrisy
of this war on terror
that relies on terror
to cultivate more terrorists
in order to perpetuate the notion
that Orwell posited

war is peace
freedom is slavery
ignorance is bliss
isn't it

in my naïveté
i rejected the reality of
torture and murdered children for
i nursed a secret hope that
despite the pictures and videos
that served as empirical evidence
we were still somehow
the good guys and
they were the bad guys

but Americans rained white
phosphorous on Fallujah
dropped the world's first
and hopefully last
atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
we toppled democratically elected socialists
whose interests betrayed our self-serving agendas
cultivating a policy of extra-judicial assassination
regime change is the name of the game
just ask the CIA
they'd tell you
business is booming but
then they'd have to **** you

so i switched off my TV screen
and picked up books
i read Slaughterhouse-V
and treasured the way Vonnegut
looks at the lives of even
bees and butterflies as valuable
intoning "so it goes"
every time a living thing dies

i read O'Brien's
recollections
of Vietnam
a month later
he said that
like white lies
tall tales and
fishermen’s yarns
every war story
has a bit of truth

and i've seen the proof
in the photographs of
Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay
in the aftermath of drone strikes
that left pieces of kids scattered
across the desert sands of foreign lands

i see the toxic side-effects of
systemic violence in the eyes
of homeless veterans suffering
on the streets with PTSD
a flicker of fear livens a
deadened gaze at the sound of
every backfiring engine
as if they're a thousand miles away
on some distant shore

betrayed by their own
government once again
a Purple Heart is
a death sentence
when there are 22
military suicides a day
thanks for your service
now die in silence

like bad religion the phrase
war crime is rather redundant
and i testify not because i
aim to disrespect the
men and women in uniform
on the contrary

when i say
**** war
it is because i
cherish every brother
and every sister
who has perished in the
churning gears of conflict

they shoved tall tales of hope
for a collegiate education
and far-flung travel
down our throats
just sign here
right along the dotted line

we want you
to march into hellfire
we want you
to send missiles into
tiny huts and villages
tracking cell phone signals
we want you
to sit down
shut up and
just do as you're told

to every fallen human who
has been sent off to fight on
behalf of this
or any other
corrupt nation
i sincerely apologize
for not taking to the streets to protest
a vitriolic ideology

i regret filing my taxes
when 54% or more of our budget goes to
military expenditures so they could
stick an M-16 in your hands
and ship you off to die for abstract
and so often arbitrary phrases like
freedom and justice for all

you were robbed of your liberty
by a capitalist system that seeks profit
like a false prophet for
bank accounts soar in times of war  
and in my apathy i hammered
nails into your coffin

and i pride myself on  
being an anti-militaristic
non-violent anarchist because
i don't hate soldiers
if i did i would remain
silent and apathetic
and let the government
abuse its youth

i celebrate humanity
regardless of ethnicity and creed
which is precisely why i despise
this system that sacrifices
generation after generation for
conquest and imperial notions

pray tell
will we turn from the
error of our ways
wake up from
this terrorist daze
before it's too late
and say

the State can try to
whitewash history but
i refuse to let them
brainwash me

i see the words floating on
message boards or perched
upon the lips of jocular hypocrites
double-standards that demand
sensual chastity and virginal sexuality
in endless iterations of irony

the concussive
monosyllabic words
slung like stones
cast like arrows

****
*****
*****

all labels for
women possessed of
the courage to pursue
their own passion

once upon a time a
Nazarene insisted a ******* had
more integrity than a rich
statesman throwing self-serving parties
so tell me why so
many Christian politicians
propagate patriarchal notions of depravity
in blanket attempts to regulate
the bodies of women

if being anti-choice was really
about preventing abortions
why do rich right-wing conservative
Republicans spend all their time
and money picketing free clinics
when the solution lies in comprehensive
****** education universal healthcare
complimentary birth control
and comprehensive child support

don't dare use the reprehensible
rhetoric of pro-life unless you're
at once anti-war
and anti-death penalty

riddle me this
what pray tell is the
difference between a jealous
religious misogynist
and a secular sexist

it's rather simple actually
while the former bases his
****-shaming on the edicts of
a two thousand year old letter to
the Corinthians inconspicuously
sandwiched between a celebration of
love and a section on speaking in tongues
the latter’s learned behavior is
birthed by a hyper-masculine culture
grounded in dominance

either way we await the day
when wild women raze
these ideologies  
with torches before
rising like phoenixes
from the ashes of
decimated passages
dismissed by intellectuals
as archaic and outmoded
deaf blind and dumb to
the vestiges of modernity
that sap unscientific
philosophies of their potency
and render them utterly obsolete

in their wake
these proud women
erase the hate
from words like

****
*****
*****

and reclaim equality
with a far more
comprehensive term

feminist

now don't get me wrong
i love wordsmiths
semiotic story-tellers
rhapsodists rhythmically reciting
love languages from memory
connecting disparate lines
between discordant thoughts like
gods breathing life into dust

for these steel swords we've
conjured up do not rust
nor do they cut flesh

with mouths like ink fountains
we espouse words at the whims
of pens that often seem possessed
of their own volition and
we are their mere harbingers

they slice to the quick
past bone and marrow to
the human spirit and
tap into sentience through
sophisticated sentence structure
measured meter catalyzing cadences
of consonance in confidence

so by all means
spit rhymes and chime in
on current events
i love the rally cries
that seek to stymy injustice
ridicule bigotry and
foment dissent

but don't preach at me
your words of salvation
fall on deaf ears
you cannot save me
because i'm already divine
one-of-a-kind
just like you

i don't fancy myself above
satirizing fictitious and megalomaniacal
depictions of godhood
i've found that humor
helps us navigate the
half-truths and veiled threats
that inundate our daily existence
regardless of whether
they originate from
preachers politicians pundits
or poets

****-shaming and victim-blaming
are pathetic attempts to cull dull minds
no thanks mine's full to the bursting
you think you're clever for slapping
together a couple of words brewed
for maximum effect but you haven't
got the faintest clue do you no

you're nothing but a bully with a pulpit
fearmongering and shouting damnation
mixing Church and State and business
in a trifecta of tyranny
an orgastic oligarchy
of eternal enmity

when we die we pass
into the black abyss of nothingness
each of us a blip on the spectrum of
life under constant duress
before we ultimately perish
a meaningless speck of dust on
an endless shore of who was
who is and who will come to be

this is not a nihilistic proclamation
nor an atheistic defamation of
human beings but a rational
refutation of misanthropy
masquerading as community

your love looks a lot like hatred

i seek to offer an alternative
to the endless cycles of
condemnation that sprout from
the pages of holy books
like gnarled trees bequeathed
unto us by the seeds
of false prophecies

let's face the music
we will all die alone
and there is nothing
and no one
waiting for us
no white light or
loved ones on
the other side
no arbiter of fate
waiting at the gate
to permit us entrance
to a heavenly place

if we could only muster the courage
to divorce ourselves from fatalistic
fantasies of the afterlife
that keep us bent-kneed
we might find within us the strength
to seize the day and
live life so brilliantly that

we'd create a heaven on earth
if merely we departed from the
hellish impulses that divide us
into despondent collections of
self-righteous hypocrites and
simply admit the only thing we
know for certain is that we
know nothing for certain at all

perhaps then we could salvage
a modicum of freedom from
the wreckage of shattered
egos and emaciated lies
that plague this planet
with circumstantial evidence
while relegating our liberty
and inhibiting conscience

in the spirit of free inquiry
then let us question
everyone and everything
starting with yours truly

last i heard you were
reading Oscar Wilde's
The Picture of Dorian Gray
have you mustered the  
courage since then to
exhibit authenticity when
you say
i love you

to the golden girl
staring back at you in the mirror
can you peel back the
veil obscuring your self-image
to see a little clearer

ten months
since we last
exchanged
circumstantial
pleasantries

funny

we used to converse every day
c'est la vie is what i imagine you'd
have to say for yourself after all
it always did sound like an excuse
constantly reclusive your
imaginary deity the
only refuge you've ever known

so wander despondently
refugee of refuse
pilfer from the gutters
of garbage some semblance
of purpose some pretense of
predestination to validate your
meaningless existence

**** it up like
the rest of us
there's no rhyme or
reason for the so-called
seasons of life

you're a fair-weather
friend and though i might've
crossed oceans for you then
i don't mind you
out of my life

you should’ve paid closer
attention when they
once told you
be careful if you
befriend a writer

they'll make you
immortal
even when you
just want to
die

i guess that's life

six weeks later
i can still taste the
faint scent of liquor on
your breath the remnant
of our most recent tryst

the way you bit your
lip and grinned at me
your eyes flashed with
forbidden mischief
when i asked
if i could kiss you

we entangled
ourselves for a moment
extricated from the miasma
of complications our
bodies speaking words
in an ancient language
too sincere to
be misunderstood

six days ago
you asked me not
to write anymore
poems about you

i'd made you shake
your eyes rolled back
with ecstatic envy
in rhythm with  
an ode in the vein
of e.e. cummings that left
you quaking on the
brink of bliss
waging an internal war
fighting the impulse
to release the avalanche
of affection latent in
our day-to-day conversations

why stop the flow of words
tell me true my friend
my love
my muse

riddle me this
what would you have me do
when every line i pen starts
and ends with you

they say the road to hell
is paved with golden intentions
and they are not mistaken i
see it's latent
hidden within psychosocial declarations
of everlasting love from a narcissistic god
i don’t give much credence to
the insistent proclamations of eternal
damnation in a metaphysical realm
of torment and brimstone but

don’t get me wrong
i’ve seen hell in the
wolfish grins of pilfering preachers
in the glassy eyes of opiated masses
i was careful when i stared
into that dark abyss
knowing it glared right back at me
emphatically declaring that i
was the lost sheep
a fallen brother separated
from the good shepherd’s flock
a prodigal son isolated in
alienating atheism but

i’ve come to love my
outcast status i’d rather
rot in the dirt after
raising hell on Earth
than suffer rebirth in ethereal bliss
espousing endless reiterations
of worship for a
fictitious megalomaniac

god is dead we killed him
deicide stains these hands
in shades of scarlet and crimson
the triumph of humanity will not
fade once again to the putrid
obeisance and ridiculous reverence
or religious references to divinity

salvation lies within

two decades of dedication
to the Christian ideal
left me dejected rejecting the
shallow lies and overt
misconceptions of religion
chose to begin again in the
reclamation of self-determination
i found a dignity independent from
a deity perpetuating guilt and regret
and though i will never forget the
progressive lessons of a radical rabbi
offering a message of hope and forgiveness
i’ve found that those same tenants
are seriously lacking in the
contemporary Christian church

if your god is
omnipotent and not
merely impotent
than tell me why he
needs you to
defend him

come on coward
if you’re real
show yourself
here’s the chance to
prove me wrong
sling lightning from the skies
and take my life i’m
not afraid i’m ready to die
and part from the suffering
that inundates this existence

strike me down and remove
all doubt of your majestic malevolence
a malfeascent adolescent prone
to fits of jealous rage and
temporal temper tantrums

that’s what i thought

i only hear the sounds of
a theological clown show
self-styled scholars enumerating  
passages of mercy and compassion
in the same holy text that condones
**** and slavery and child abuse
which would be ironic if it
hadn't been slapped together over
centuries of violence and bloodshed
and used to justify two millennia's worth of
repressive oppression a
putrescent obsession with control

it's true what Sartre said
hell is other people
and we have No Exit
from the depravity that
obfuscates critical inquiry
in the immortal words of
Shakespeare the nether-realms
are emptied all the devils are here

your god maybe a figment of
fantastic imagination but so
much horror has been wrought
with his name as the justification

so forgive me if i seem hyperbolic
but it is no exaggeration  
when i declare that religion itself
is a hell from which we're still
trying desperately to wake up