i hope you ******* overdose.

if there was any justice
in this indifferent universe
the H you blew
your paycheck on
rather than your son
would've left you comatose.

i hope you ******* overdose.

no room for pity. cower, coward.
spare us all the trouble.
chase the dragon, get back up
on that horse again.
i pray to god the mud
you smoke coats your lungs
and turns to toxic sludge.

i hope you ******* overdose.

one day you'll see just what you've done.
when the realization hits you
like a baseball bat
smack!
against your skull
and your body flops about
in its death throes,
punctuate the blows
with a bit of prose:
you don't poison  
those you claim to love.

i hope you ******* overdose.

the brook
giggles
to our right
as the mote
floats
between us.

for a moment
that hangs
suspended
like the bridge
we crossed,
i study the dust.

you swear
it's a bug,
but i think
it looks a bit
like a dandelion
fluff, puffed
up by a wish
borne
on exhaled breath.

but perhaps
i'm just
distracted.
as my focus shifts
your sequoia tree irises
come into view.
i could study
the entire forest
framing your eyes
shaped like almonds
and never find
a richer shade
to plant
inside my mind.

we have been deceived.
corralled like tepid sheep,
fattened beef
waiting beyond
the doors of the slaughterhouse.

as pigs lick their lips,
a daemon’s death dirge drifts
listless across the
Atlantic, an erratic dichotomy
corroding rationality—
this executive edict
barring refugees.

caught without a compass,
a flotilla of ships weathering
the elements.
for forty days
and forty nights,
we’ve been lead
two-by-two
by elephants
and donkeys.

demagogues commandeered
the lighthouse, directing
our ark across
scattered rocks.
an armada
of shattered splinters,
remnants of water-logged vessels
we’d hoped to sail to utopia.

caught in the webs
we wove, droves
of drones spewing
bombs across Aleppo.

as spittle collects
on spluttering orange lips,
will we
pause
for but a moment?

collect
our thoughts.
reflect.
history is a shattered
mirror and we’ve pricked
our fingers trying
to piece the image
back together.

there’s a hunger
for blood
refracting in our eyes.
a misanthropy
that smarts and stings.

a recalcitrant population
coerced by a television
rhetorician’s clever
devices, devised
to separate and segregate
during this crisis
caused by our missiles.

there is no moral arc
to the universe. hope,
Hedges wrote, is mania
if it remains vapid
and refuses to address
the depravity of our
physical reality.

we’ve already lost.
just ask the children
barely clinging to life,
covered in the debris
of their former homes.

all that’s left for us
is to bash the fascists.
smash every illusory border
in our heads and hearts.
burn down the walls
they try to build
around us.

overturn the tables
of the oligarchs,
stuff Molotov cocktails
down their bloated throats.
open revolt is our only hope.
we’ll build a sanctuary
in this City Beautiful.

a toxic sludge,
sentient,
slugging towards oblivion.

drown my blood in crud.
stain every cell
opaque
with ink.

why fight
when you
already know
the outcome?

let go.

the struggle
is futile, suffering
is inevitable.
forsake hope:
we're all born
expired.

give up.

death is one
last gasp.
breathe deep.
swallow the muck.
coat my lungs
with mud.

passenger, pass away.

i prayed to god, but
the only one listening
was the NSA.

neither equal nor
free. merely prey. a morsel
wolfed down by the State.

while the donkeys bray
and elephants bluster, the
wolves of Wall Street feast.

and we are their main
course, mortal morsels on a
chessboard of happenstance.

survival? fat chance!
an American Dream, robbed
right beneath our feet.

the penalty for
refusing to acquiesce
is dire indeed.

you could very well
lose everyone you love and
all you cherish.

or you can choose to
refuse to play their game. be
the change you wish to see.

it's clear to all who
won't be blinded by borders:
we're what's for dinner.

if you don't like the
way the table is set, flip
it the **** over.

my heart is heavy
as a corpse
hanging from the State's gallows.
my head is light
as a child
eaten away by her own hunger.

there is a marriage between mental instability
and the fragility of this postmodern world.
anxiety exacerbated like rising sea-levels,
stress fractures greater than tectonic shifts,
insomnia that shakes you from sleep,
an internal alarm powered by the doomsday clock.

fury waits for me, lurking like cluster munitions
on Syrian soil, primed and ready
to rip the innocent limb-from-limb.
bombs bought and paid for
with the cold, hard cash  
pilfered by overlords,
pick-pocketed by white,
heteronormative men
with invisible hands.

caught in a web of poetry
amidst threads i've spun like a spider,
a noose fashioned
from so many strands of rope.
constantly oscillating
between interconnected themes:
tragedy and suffering,
the hallmarks of existence.

showing solidarity
with the least of these
virtually guarantees
an early grave.
to possess
even a modicum
of empathy
in times like these
is to court
interminable
melancholy.

in school they told me to keep politics and cursing
out of my poetry. from elementary education
to post-graduate work at the university,
no one really cared to teach me how to write.
certainly not the pretentious prats
who'd somehow forgotten
our words are swords
in the flesh of the State.

they told us flowery metaphors
were welcome, but critiques of the systems
that would eradicate flowers from planet earth
were choked by the weeds
of existential philosophies,
too much
for the average reader
to comprehend.

i was taught to keep polysyllabic words like "neoliberalism,"
"xenophobia,"
and "corporatocracy"
out of rhythmic verse
because the bourgeoise
want to read something ****.

witness the revolt of the proletariat.
i'm embracing a literacy
anointed in Angela y Davis's legacy,
"i am changing the things i cannot accept."
i'll fight like hell and bleed
the imagery from every stanza
if that's what it takes to show
that all art is always already resistance.

to be an anarchist
in the twenty-first century
is to refute practically every vestige
of contemporary society.
to embrace paradoxes and be skeptical,
practicing critique, an endeavor
Foucault termed "reflective indocility."
liberty and equity in equal measures,
an individual amidst a community.
hopeless, but still fighting.

the answer to the ills afflicting us
are available if we avail ourselves
immediately, parting ways
like divorcees,
finally severing all ties
with this American sham
of false democracy.

the answer is neither on the left
nor the right. we've peeked behind the scenes
and seen the corporate-state is held
on a short leash by the oligarchy,
bound and gagged, nothing but a plaything
satisfying the master-slave binary.

if we're to triumph over the bigotry
rising like seas bloodied by refugees
fleeing the endless wars the U.S. has instigated,
we'll have to get creative again.
dare to dream utopically, living
as if we're already free,
seeking liberty, equality, and solidarity.

so consider this a manifesto of sorts:
until i go to greet death as an old friend,
happily released from daily suffering,
i'll sit at my typewriter and bleed
for the least of these,
then climb to my feet and fight
to take back the ******* streets.