it's true
the revolution will not be televised
but the fascist revival premiered
on all the major networks' corporate channels
in 1080p HD at prime-time hours

with perfect clarity
viewers could see
an oompa loompa
with an orange toupee
a xenophobe
spewing violence and vitriol
peddling snake oil while spitting venom
stirring a bubbling cauldron
spilling over in fear-mongering demagoguery
served like crack candy to the Republican elite
reveling in their privilege
cheering white supremacy

a tyrant
tirading behind a polished wooden podium
flanked by hues of red white blue and gilded gold
like some comic strip super-villain
but this obtuse excuse for human refuse
is not some Saturday morning cartoon
defeated by the heroes after 30 minutes
of selfless feats and epic deeds
a death dirge plays on repeat in the background

you can't always get what you want

meanwhile
we're holding silent vigils back home
carving the sigil of Orlando's skyline into our skin
while a snake slithers into a City Beautiful
bedecked in her $3k pressed pant-suit
leering wolfishly at a local club for LGBTQ+ youth
the downtown heartbeat
of outcasts and misfits
a Pulse
that bigotry and self-hatred couldn't *****

but tragedies are converted to cheap currencies
in the clawed hands of dynastic oligarchs
sporting the support of billionaires and super-PACs
she knows the Establishment has got her back
she'll shed crocodile tears
just in time for the photo-ops

violence begets violence begets violence
humanity's universal language
a tongue shared by despots and presidents
in the wake of stolen sanctuaries
she'll justify razing Syrian children
beneath a barrage of hellfire missiles
and predator drones targeting cell-phone signals
under the pretense of bringing the terrorists
to some sycophantic mirage of justice

we're manufacturing new soldiers
for the Caliphate to brainwash with promises
of dead gods and seventy-two virgins
machine-fed by automatic weapons
to the toothy jaws
that bottomless maw
of endless ******* war
which always vaunts
profit over people

the conceptual construct of gender binarism
becomes an imperceptible selling point
in the incomprehensible and reprehensible rhetoric
issuing from either side of the political aisle
but what will it matter
either way
an egoistic megalomaniac
has his or her finger poised over the trigger
a neoliberal warmonger and hypocritical fraud
or a reality TV star who lauds the KKK on Twitter

our only hope is found in the streets
unchained by compassion's transformative capacity
freed to utilize our minds
humanity's indomitable faculty
nurturing a community that seizes life
in anthems of liberty equality and solidarity
anarchic manifestoes penned in lines
of red and black ink

progressives will insist otherwise
they'll declare emphatically that our only choice
lies in selecting the lesser of two evils
to lead us to the brink of oblivion
but Orwell wrote the future of humanity
looked like a boot crushing our heads
that either way we'd all be dead
and the harsh reality is that the soot-stained sole
curb-stomping this country
fits both the left and right foot

i yearn to change
the world
but i can't seem
to change myself

i fear the gears have ground to a halt
and i've been left to gather rust
between the teeth of tired cogs
in the jaws of this dysfunctional mess

am i nothing more
than a bent tool
a broken fool trapped
in self-detesting testament

piece
me together
with anger anguish
and mistrustful lust

the aspects of a psyche
peeled back
like flayed fingernails
exposing fresh flesh

i've resolved
to be a nightly victim
of my own failing
mental health

i may be pointing fingers
and smashing mirrors
but i haven't been avoiding
the abject reality

a reflection
i know reflexively is inexorably
responsible for this current
catastrophe

i
am my own
sworn
enemy

a contagion
jealously infecting
everyone and everything
i've tried to love

though i dream of death
every evening
i continually awaken
disappointed

why is time so much harder to ****
when a collection of moments are brought to a standstill?
lie in bed and study the popcorn ceiling.
perforations of personality
erasing all semblance of meaning.

rain runs her languid fingers over my windowsill
leaving lingering fingerprints that smudge the glass.
a ******
tapping intermittently
waiting to be invited in.

"open up your window,"
every droplet whispers, "let me slip
into something more comfortable."
the rain has grown sick of the endless cycles
exasperated by precipitation and evaporation.

the fan spins in rhythm overhead.
the blades drone like a time-bomb
ticking down the moments i wasted
stumbling through vertigo horizons
fleeing endlessly without taking a single step.

i curse the rain and pull the shades.
i wish i was dead
and that's perfectly okay.
maybe tomorrow
i won't feel this way.

we are all knights errant
chipping at the gilded armor
of tyrants and overlords
with rusty swords
doing little more
than tilting at windmills
and howling at a world
with hands clamped
tight over its deafened ears
and lids clenched shut
to block out the fears
of insignificance
the years of feigned ignorance
when we knew all along
we've no one to blame
for the hand we've been dealt
we'll all get the hell that we've built

raging at the moon and stars
eternally pushing boulders
up the slopes of mountains
just to watch them roll back down

nothing we do will be remembered
our lives like the dying light
of seven billion supernovae
burning in unison

a universe without masters and slaves
awaits us all beyond the grave
when our bones disintegrate
and carry us away from this place
a globe we bathed in blood and toxins

no gods to welcome us into the fold
no shepherd searching for his lost flock
each of us a footnote to a fourteen billion
year old explosion that split the veil
of life asunder

salvation is flirting with death
knowing she still haunts
our every footstep
life is defying illusory deities
raising the bird
to an apathetic horizon

we will all be forgotten
dismantled and interned in disrepair
atoms fractured and drifting apart
distant as two motes of dust
in this ever-expanding cosmos

yet still we endure
for though none can contend
with the factions that rend our planet
we are all dying super-giants
refusing to go quietly
into the last goodnight
for if we are all made of star-stuff
what can we do but combust

well before dawn
bats her eyelashes
at a yawning horizon
i claw my way free
emerging from six feet under

burgeoning with fingernails
still caked in dirt from ceaseless digging
unable to slumber with a tombstone as a pillow

a corpse interned
amidst the earth's embrace
deadening this landscape
souring the soil
infecting every body
within proximity

i've been pushing my luck
in place of daisies
locked within the confines
of a mass grave
sunken past the rifts
into tremor-torn trenches  
adrift with all the cadavers
lost and scattered across the deep

searching for some clarity
amidst misremembered memories
so i might finally rest in peace
not pieces

i. you are at once absent and present

mourning dew on tobacco leaves
transgressive pleasure simultaneously
deluding and eluding me
i remain an equation incapable
of comprehending infinity

tantalizing fantasies splashed
like water across a stovetop
simmering on contact before evaporating
with my unconscious thoughts
trapped within half-forgotten dreams
restless in unending nightmares

a cosmic drift of psychological
rifts in a psyche sundered by
the fault-line ruptures
of cognitive dissonance earthquakes

there's no stitching up
the severed seams
or recovering the effervescence
of innocence lost in our ascent to a rooftop
to treat with bliss in the midst
of the moon's ambivalence

ii. you are at once absent and present

i thought the stars danced for only us
that you put them in the sky
so i could study nebulae
with the same five senses
i'd use to explore you

the stars looked on
voyeurs surveying
the crush of our bodies
listening to the rush of lust
leaking past flesh flushed
with explicit elixirs

we found the philosopher's stone
became ageless in those moments
drunk on alchemical toxins
poisoning our blood-streams
souring the precious draught  
of friendship we'd cherished
for half a decade

the taste of your alcohol-breath
still taints my tongue
lungs billowing like corpses
pierced by carrion
a larynx choked with regret
while you smoke your cigarettes
incapable of going back
yet returning
ad infinitum

iii. you are at once absent and present

they sentenced anarchy to death in 1887.
in the wake of the Haymarket Affair,
they tried in vain to hang a fifth figure
on a chilly November day,
attempted to fit a noose
on an idea that's bullet-proof.

solidarity.
liberty.
equality.

a refrain that remains in remembrance
of Engel, Fischer, Parsons, Spies,
and every man, woman, and child
whose life was robbed by the State
before his or her time.

a mantra celebrating the universal
qualities capable of unifying humanity
even in the face of an apparatus arraigned
to divide
and segregate.

we march in Chicago and Seattle,
in Toronto and NYC,
continuing the fight they began
for dignity and a living wage—
our burning rage growing to a conflagration
as we wave black flags and reclaim
the city streets from killer cops
and corporate oligarchs.

authority an illusion we will shed  
in the tides of black and red, united
against injustice.