vultures feast on
carrion carcasses
gore crows gather in
black blotches overhead
clouds of soot
a conspiracy of ravens
happily gawking
flapping avidly
before diving down
to rip apart
putrid flesh
hanging sloppily
from bloodied beaks

the dead feed
on the dead

you still show up
every time i put
pen to paper
looking down
over my shoulder
watching inspiring
you inhabit every molecule of ink

each time i sit down at my desk
you peel apart my brain cells
as if you were pulling
back your veil on
your wedding day and
surveil tangential passages
bridging my synaptic gaps

i am a bee caught within your web
and i feel your thousand eyes
probing and poring over me
i couldn't escape
even if i wanted to

each black drop or generous dollop
has a hundred thousand
splintered fragments of you
fractions refracting strife and
intermittent anguish that
comes and goes without
so much as a
moment's warning
or a fond farewell

i have grown accustomed
to a lack of sleep

on the drive home i
spotted an absurd billboard broadcasting
a benign worldview an asinine
sign espousing a single word meant
to inspire endless iterations of hope and
worship in one bisyllabic phrase

believe.

it had a period
at the conclusion
as if this was
the end all and be all
a sycophantic
intonation that insinuated
pseudo-religious proclamations
independent of rational
thought and evidence
a foregone preclusion
to excluding others
on the condition that
they didn't share the
exact same faith

ironically
the billboard advertised a
multi-million dollar company  
Morgan & Morgan
a law firm masquerading
beneath the pretentious
pretense of their slogan
For The People
as if they were god's gift
to the city of Orlando
but if they were truly devoted
to the precepts of Jesus i dare say
they'd spend less time gloating
and more time defending the poor

'cause when you're making thousands
of dollars an hour on someone else's
pain and misfortune i somehow wager
the radical rabbi who entered Jerusalem on a
donkey would have a thing or two to say

what would the world
look like if the people
who call themselves Christ-followers
quit spewing sermons on billboards
and focused instead
on their savior's
greatest commandment

if a film fails to
pass the Bechdel Test
will you have the gaul to point it out

when your job forces you
to choose between paying rent
and lying to sell an ethically bankrupt
overly-priced yearly membership to your
not-so-friendly-neighborhood-bookstore
will you stand by conviction and walk alone

when your students ask
why you detest authority
will you tell it to them straight
explain that you estimate people
are at their best when they question
everyone and everything standing in their way

at any rate
no matter what
regardless of the cost
will you speak the truth
even when your voice shakes

i once met an old
man
who did
sudoku
with ink and
pen

black or blue
it didn't
much matter
one way
or another

so long as
it was never
pencil
he despised
pencil on
principle

on those rare
occasions
when he'd make a
mistake

he refused
to cross out the incorrect
integer

i asked him
why
one sunny
summer day
and he told me

that we can't cross out
our choices
or erase
our mishaps
we can only
turn the page

and on he went
to his next
puzzle

in the words of
a reverend and a King
human salvation
lies in the hands
of the creatively
maladjusted

defamiliarize the chaos

an absent-minded apparatus
addling brain cells
checks and balances
proliferate a status quo
of enmity and aggression that
propagates oppression and
dismantles genuine political
expression for those outside
the whitewashed coffin

recognize the enemy
in our own eyes as we
eradicate the apathy that
leeches liberty and
fabricates freedom

reformist rhetoric is
too little too late
revolutions are cyclical
and ultimately infantile

so fan the flames of rebellion
destruction precedes creation
raise hell and raze the system
of enmity that pits
7.4 billion
brothers and sisters
against each other

anarchy is order

hand-me-down lessons lifted
from leather-bound tomes
in iterations of half-hearted exultation
but i found definition in negation

i am the antichrist

for false hope mingles with
crippling self-doubt and
cerebral self-mutilation leads
inexorably to intellectual suicide

i won't follow the death drive

rejecting fantasies of faith
in order to
overcome the world
my struggle is undertaken

alone

i will not sacrifice
reason science art philosophy
for a paternal phantasmagoria
or pastoral paradise

black sheep weren't born to follow