Posts Tagged Resistance
America 2017, #7 & #8, Dead Factories Freezing My Worn Guts
Posted by Carl in Photography, Poems on March 2, 2017
These are not
the silly unem-
ployed, hidden
darkness ex-
ploiting
fear of dying stark-
ly alone, alone.
.
.
More Dystopia Today from Amateur Carl
My Dive Today
I know about this asshole who comes into
the cafeteria and turns up the volume to tortuous
levels on the TV decrepitly showing CNN,
with complete disregard for my peaceful reading,
and the bottoms of my soul start to scream in agony,
as he dips his face two inches above his slop,
comes up halfway with rafts of food sticking out,
chewing madly, allowing his eyebrows to raise
high on his evil face to show how very serious
he is about absorbing the molasses spewed
by the cranky anchor who thinks she is god
or number one, perhaps best entertainer on earth,
and then my stomach turns in revolt with my soul.
But I stop, looking at the rusted brass pea green
building on the edge of the view out the south window,
see myself as a judgmental pig, wondering who it is
who has allowed me to live so long in a broken
bucket of worldly chaos, the kind that was meant
to send me flying, or flopping, out a window
on my seventeenth floor, screaming, wanting
the anchor’s god to scoop me up and fill all the empty
spots with shit that invisibly occupies the air, making
me complete in the unworldly, scolded rag of my mind.
.
A Depressive’s Unfulfilled Manic Late Night
Siri
can’t help
me find joy, life, wading
through thick machines, littered, soulless,
with tricks.
.
The Birds Mock Me, But Harry Loves Me
Wandering madness catches me briefly
after I skip exercise, after I stress over
my lack of discipline, and the birds come around,
they mock me, but it’s not personal,
and the pigeons vibrate detestably, so I
send Harry through the sliding glass door, and
while he smiles, he makes a lazy but quick lunge
at the pigeons, causing me to wonder whether they
can take off quickly enough, but they plod like
C-130s and off they go, and I wonder, where do
they go with such sloppy bodies. My enjoyment
of Harry’s antics, his smiles and circling tail, his
wiggly glances, sideways, quizzing my sleepy stare,
my enjoyment chugs uphill, fights my shame,
and I stay right here with Harry,
for a moment.
.
Right-Sizing Traps Part II
A three-week streak, unthinkable, but it
was here. Imagine a perfect future through
to death without the slightest hiccup, and that
was my streak. Pride blew my insides out so I might
be a turtle without shell or feet, and I told my
father, for the first time in more than four
years, Dad, it has lifted. I think I’m okay. It’s
better, and I want to live during moments,
fat turquoise moments during ripe days, and
can you imagine the inflation of that pride, as I
dreamed of my father imagining that he might die
in peace now that he knows. Forever, his son will
be well forevermore. I woke up this morning and the
big, black, woolly, wet, cold blankets were strangling, poisoning
my spirit, and I said fuck you. Fuck you. Go away.
My blankets don’t leave on command so I remember
instructions: be with the pain: dig the pain: it is what
you are: be in the moment: don’t fight it. I rest
crooked in my chair and I cry for many long
minutes, and I’m afraid to call my father. I’m
defective again. Be with the pain. Three weeks
had seemed as if forever, but I was an egotistical,
overconfident prick to think I beat nature at her game,
much less to imagine beating God by countering his vehemence.
.
Where Did My Friends Go?
I hide from my friends.
They circle like airplanes
in the fog of Pearl Harbor
battles and the radar
is fucked, so they’re
sharks, and I’m in
the tower, but they’ve
tossed me in the basement,
or I’ve tossed myself,
and I’m cargo like
destroyed Buddhas
rolling off runways
into dense thickets
of barbed wire from
camps where when
we’ve lost our purpose
we’re carted off to die,
and I feel my face,
screaming at the fear,
as I’m chewed up by a
G.E. engine, splatting
and splashing droplets
falling near my scattered
friends.
.
The New Encroachments
The giant orange bear
eats pink frosting. He flies
with torn and hidden wings,
painting evergreen needles until they
die, until they fall away to the forest floor,
and they grow the earth with the detritus
of the greedy bear. His paint, a dark oil,
covers all that is near, and each day,
he works mightily to grow bigger and
bigger, and the needles, they protest
like sheep, perhaps silently, as they fall and
tumble to their deaths, those tender moments
feeding the orange furry mess with swords
for claws. The giant orange bear demands
that the needles move in ways they can’t
move and demands that the needles
not move with the wind, but instead, that
they cater to his regulatory whims, which do
nothing but twist the needles so they suffer
poignantly before their ultimate oily deaths.
.
Back Into
It’s a brand new day, a new job.
The waterfall is brilliant, but the chatters
are annoying the hell into me,
testing my patience with humanity,
but I’ve coached myself
to be compassionate,
so I let the voices commingle
with the tumbling water.
My brain starts to hurt.
.
Massive Hole in Street
The orange monkey, stretching,
veins throbbing, pulling thistles
from the brutal tree, and death
is waiting, six souls, arms folded,
safety yellow, fluorescent, alarms
ready, massive Hole in street,
they’ve been working Hole
for weeks, and the black snakes
terrorize my lunch hour as I
wonder when they will be buried,
and when they are buried will
the monkey go on vacation so I can
live undisturbed and enjoy the people?
Melt into the Stink
Furry monster man in an Everlast
sweatshirt, recalling
the boxing rings with corners
for death, drawing
Mohammed Ali,
rope-a-doping
“Float like a butterfly,
sting like a bee,”
melt
into the stink
of the canvas,
knowing Everlast
is the opposite
of what the brand suggests.
.
stillfugue 