Communique #1

Some days it seems like everything is wrong.
Some days it seems like all the worst people are winning.
Some days it seems like faith in humanity is a fool's errand.
Some days it seems like hope for the future is a hollow delusion.

Some days it is a really nice day.

COMMUNIQUE

To: All those who believe their power to be absolute; all those who believe they can serve the few at the expense of the many; all those insulated from the unpleasantness and cruelty of the world by wealth and luxury.

   THINGS ARE NOT AS STABLE AS THEY SEEM.

   We-- the people, the public, the proletariat, the poor-- are writing to let you know that we are still here. We have been trammeled by your legislation, bullied by your advertising, and water-boarded by your deluge of lies, but WE ARE STILL HERE.

   Your pundits continue to shame us wholesale as "takers", "moochers", and "slackers"-- fine. We will continue to ignore them. As you waste time trying to turn our own opinions against us, we are quietly working to ensure our own futures without you, your mouthpiece media, or your systems of subjugation. 
   
   The carrot you dangle before us is rotten-- we can see the flies. The stick you brandish in our faces grows ever more flimsy as our lives are strained thinner and thinner. You cannot threaten us with suffering; suffering is where we have already been living. Our calluses are thick, our will is strong, and our belief in reckless love is unshakable. No longer can fear-mongering divide us from one another; no more will empty promises keep us in line. We have seen behind the curtain and you cannot distract our gaze from the true source of our suffering.

   We know the game is rigged and more and more of us are refusing to play. We have accepted the risks. We have calculated the score. We know our power. Very soon all those millions of backs you have stabbed, subjugated, and stepped on to reach your false pinnacle will disappear from beneath you. You cannot stop this. The harder you clamp down the stronger we will rise up. The more insidiously you attempt to disperse us, the more powerfully the tide will rush back upon you.

   The only decision left to you is just how hard you will fall. Return us our rights, recognize our worth and dignity, and we will welcome you. Try to ignore us or intimidate us and we will dance past your roadblocks and march, united in joyous freedom, into a bright new day, leaving you alone in the empty ruins of your grand castles.

   Our love is stronger than your money.

   Beware the hungry.

Monster #3

Monster #3- A Message From Inside a Collapsing Mind

         "Someone has to be there to throw out a foot before the last door slams shut--it may never open again. There are no structures more imprisoning than those built out of the walls within our own minds."

Shaggy little monster, thick white fur, long black claws, big blue eyes. He sits on the corner by himself, a morose Muppet-reject. He tapped his dances and plucked his strings and plinked his keys with a grin and a sashay for passer-by. Some smiled, some scoffed. All forgot him as soon as their eyes slid past. No one is left out this evening. He sighs and smokes and counts the change. Not enough. Never even close. A cheap drink, another night under a piece of something solid. Nothing more.

Dizzy, awestruck mammal, turning circles, bathed in sunlight. Lost in a grove of aspens, pawing at the air, trying to test its verisimilitude. Dazzled by color and peace and silence and beauty, he stumbles every so often but can’t spare a glance to watch his feet. He tries to look everywhere at once and can’t remember to close his mouth. Yellow leaves part for golden grass waving like the peaceful oceans in narcotic dreams and children’s stories. Insects hum, the wind sighs, wildflowers blossom all around.

Giddy little hairball, he sees her. A little girl with copper braids and a sassy manner and a voice decorated with the tinkling silver gild of laughter. Lost like him, and equally unconcerned, she is dashing—delighted—through the fields. She tumbles down the hillside toward him, her entire being alighted in celebration, a brilliant comet of unthinking love and promised adventure hurtling forward to bury itself in the warm down of his furry arms. Seas could not swell to drown the friendship that holds hands and shares stupid secrets and goes exploring to mysterious and colorful worlds on a lopsided junk-machine time-sailing vessel of its own devising.

Clumsy awkward oaf, he mangles each flower he tries to pick up. Each time his claws crush another of the delicate blossoms, he jumps in surprise. She used to giggle when he did that, and then he’d manage a chuckle. Then they’d watch the sunset and he would take comfort that those radiant displays were beyond the ruin of all the minor disasters that trailed in his wake. But then it all disappeared in a belch of smoke, a screech of metal, and the hollow finality of a tiny, humming dial-tone.

Cowering, bewildered beast, twitching in panic, unable to know where to run next. The hum, the HUM! That BUZZING. Wires and motors and panels and screens. Networks, synergies, solutions sold in stock by manic, soulless smiles above neckties. Offers and deals and threats and schemes. Rhymes that go nowhere. Principles and beliefs that make no sense. Messages, messages, messages everywhere—clamoring for attention and calling out promises. A crowd, a mob, a gauntlet, a cacophony, a NIGHTMARE! They persist, they follow, they chase, they morph together into a thundering demonic voice, buzzing like a thousand flies on a thousand rotting hands, reaching out and falling short of salvation in a thousand terrible eternities. A mindless, electronic screech made up of a billion tiny relays blinking furiously to accomplish nothing but the howl: FEED, FEED—YOU WORTHLESS SHIT—FEEEEED!!!

Scattered, tortured mind, lies motionless, clamped down by certainty; there is no point going on. Only one tiny voice, at the last, flickering, warm little center of the bunker, speaks out: So the world isn’t what you thought, or what you hoped, or what you were led to believe. So what? Look around you at all these people, all these animals, all these laws and forces and phenomena—all of them just finding their function and filling it out as best they can. You were given every chance, every nudge, every boost, every advantage. You threw it all away for a buzz and then crawled back into your hole to feel sorry for yourself. Buck up. Shake it off. Fuckin’ grow a pair.

    

     Scrawny little creature, mangy, matted hair, wet, weepy eyes, he sits muttering to himself in disparate voices. He argues in hisses and cackles at jokes no one else hears… He lashes out and thrashes, moaning and screaming and beating his fists. He bellows at the walls and flails at the unfeeling stone, shouting at the mocking, empty circle of light high above. Tears soak his tangles as his throat scrapes dry, damning to hell the tunnels and the chains and the rust and the shit. He berates himself with pitiful hacking hatreds, cursing his blood and his bones and his busted heart and his clumsy, careless claws. Then he slumps against the wall, curls up and weeps quietly, with the softness of well-practiced mourning.

Sleep will come soon, laying a gentle hand on his fevered head. Perhaps he will be carried off to rest for a time in the gentle arms he got so lost seeking. Perhaps when he wakes the trap will look different—the smells not so damp, the light not so hopeless. Perhaps things will make a certain degree of sense again, another way forward to another dead end will entertain him for a while. Perhaps there is even a way out. No matter how gaunt and twisted he becomes, that little hope never quite seems to be choked off. Perhaps that is simply the final, genius stroke of the torture. Perhaps not.

Poetry: Broke Rap I

Broke Rap I

Anyone up for a revolt?

There’s a hole in my sock and another in my bedroom door.

I guess the hole I fell in is what they call the “working poor”.

Pokin’ around looking for someone who might relate;

All my childhood peers are hiding behind suburban gates.

Got a fear that’s deep seated for the postman on the sidewalk-

Dropping envelopes billing me for all the time that I’ve bought,

So I crawl back home through the summer’s climbing heat,

Up the stairs that keep me separated from the street.

Gotta eat before I go to work that shift on the grill;

It sucks to cook for others when you haven’t had your fill,

But I can’t hit the grocery store until I get paid,

And that won’t be for another three days.

Nothing left on the shelves but two handfuls of cereal.

A little splash of milk would turn the oat bran to a miracle,

But the empty fridge is taunting me with a disrespectful leer,

So I chew it up dry and wash it down with the last beer.

Wealth can rot away, but debt lasts forever.

The usurers are using us and thinking that it’s clever.

"Job creators" and "economists" are too busy blustering

To explain why profits must derive from human suffering.

Refocus? Revolution?

Saturday, September 28, 2013

     Today I woke up, fed myself, and traveled across the continental divide to attend the wedding of an old friend. After a beautiful ceremony—against a backdrop of freshly yellowed mountain aspens and the striking blue of the Colorado autumn sky—I offered my heartiest congratulations, climbed into an old red Jeep borrowed from my parents, and drove off into the sunset. I traversed the Rockies once more and returned to Deer Creek. I visited with my parents and a couple of their friends as they played spades around the kitchen table in their little cabin deep in the forest canyon. Then I drove all the way back home to Edgewater.

     I left today’s wedding reception early, before it had really even gotten started. I didn’t storm away or slink out. I simply recognized there was nothing to be gained from my remaining there. I am uncomfortable at wedding receptions—or any party at all, really. I am no good at meeting people. Occasionally, a particularly outgoing or quirky character can draw me out, but those people are rare. With most people I run out of things to talk about within minutes. I went home tonight to figure out how to turn my life into something worth celebrating. I figure if nothing else, it will help me with the small talk.

     Tonight I made what is, for me, a strong assertion: Don’t ignore me, dammit, I am worth something! Now, it is time for me to make good on that claim. It is time for me for to stop languishing in depressed indecision. The way forward is unclear in many ways, but I have made one promise. No matter what else, I will create something.

     The trouble with figuring out how to deal with the setbacks I am facing is that when I contemplate any problem, I always try to trace it as far back toward the root as possible. As a result, I sit down to pay my bills and up despairing over the injustice and suffering plaguing the entire world. It can be difficult to organize projects with that kind of unsolvable problem weighing down your drug-fried, disorganized, emotion-tossed mind.

     I have wanted for years to write about all the myriad injustices I experience and learn about every day. I have wanted to decry with the eloquence of Tom Paine all the psycho/sociological diseases I see contaminating my culture from every medium. I have wished for years to be granted wisdom enough to write a manifesto of the great life all humanity could find if only we could see past our species’ hubris and embrace our role as a part of this incomprehensibly amazing, beautifully mysterious biosphere. But I cannot save the world until I put myself together, and I cannot put myself together until I am proud of what I create.

     I hope that somehow, somewhere in these digital pages I will stumble upon sentences and phrases strong enough to forge with heat and hammer into the swords, arrows, and shields needed to outfit a phalanx of battle-ready ideas worthy of leading a long-necessary spiritual revolution. But even if I cannot crack the foundations myself, if my words move just one person to let go of getting ahead just long enough to create something of their own, the chain will continue. If something I create instills independence, inspiration, comfort, or hope in one other being on this tiny little pulsing pebble, it will have been worth it. I have to believe that. There is no alternative.

Hungry Punditry

I shoulder my way into my apartment, staggering over the threshold with an odd assortment of grocery bags swinging from my arms, milk and juice jugs wedged in my elbows, keys dangling from my pinky finger, the mail clamped in my mouth. I lurch to the kitchen and lean over towards the countertop, shedding my awkward burdens as I go. The entrance is far from graceful, but it is effective; I got everything from the car to the kitchen in one trip, no breakage.

     

After the ritual sorting and storage of the groceries, I sit to examine the mail. Tossing aside the credit card offers and discount cable service announcements (all addressed to other people, mostly former residents of this apartment), I see that the only correspondence for me is from the Jefferson County Department of Human Services. They are informing me that my Food Assistance Benefits will be reduced by some undetermined amount the day after Halloween due to a federal mandate. Or something like that. It is not the first time I have received such mail, nor will it be the last. The only consistent feature of government programs—in my experience—is inconsistency.

     

The night before, I had been treated to a television montage of condescending heads atop expensive suits oozing and spewing opinions like sewage from a backed-up toilet. On that particular night, the Topic of Outrage was government assistance programs, or as they like to call them, “entitlements” (du-dun-DUUHMM!).

Cable pundit talk shows, especially those that pass themselves off as “news”, tend to leave me in an emotionally cauterized, semiconscious state wherein I can only catch about every third or fourth word, but I got the gist: people on welfare are un-American freeloaders. The specific arguments varied as wildly as the credibility of their sources, but it isn’t really about the facts put forth or even the words surrounding them. The intended takeaway is sitting plain as day on the corners of Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant sneer: If these people were truly decent, hardworking Americans they would have done well enough for themselves that they wouldn’t need welfare. Clearly, anyone who takes government assistance is just a lazy nanny-state-teat-sucker stealing tax money from “real” Americans.

Sitting now at my kitchen table, looking over the paltry supplies I am praying will sustain me to the next paycheck, I am gripped by a sudden rush of anger. The socialist-anarchist revolutionary inside me wants to haul each of these smug strife-mongers out of their studio chairs by their thousand-dollar haircuts and just smack and shake them until all the hateful poison they promote comes rattling out of them to scatter on the floor alongside their teeth.

I cannot claim to have the solution to all (or any) of society’s ills, but I do know that spreading discord and enmity is a quality that J.K. Rowling assigned to Voldemort, not Dumbledore. Further, it is impossible to imagine that these people—in their half-million-a-year media positions—have any insight whatsoever into the lives of welfare recipients. Until you have sat, month after month, and watched as each paycheck vanishes with ever-diminishing effectiveness into sheaves of bills and expenses, wondering how the hell you are ever going to get yourself out of indirect indentured servitude to credit companies, insurance firms, and landlords, you have no right to make sweeping generalizations about the people who do suffer from the pressure of perpetual financial entrapment and the hollow, grinding despair of unshakeable debt.

Certainly there are people who cut corners, exaggerate claims, and manipulate assistance programs to their advantage. There are also spectacularly wealthy people who do the same with the tax code, campaign finance, and the legal system. At every income level some people are honest earners of everything they have, and some are conniving shitweasels looking to get ahead by any means necessary. People are people, regardless of economic class, and some blow-dried suit monkey or steely-eyed hairspray hag on TV implying (or in some cases, stating outright) that poor people are poor because they are shiftless and inferior is no different from an 1880’s robber-baron invoking “Social Darwinism” as justification for his enormous blood-soaked fortune while his workers starve.

My first proposal is to make it a federal crime on par with treason to become a television pundit. I would especially like to include a mandatory minimum sentencing structure for anyone found guilty of aiding and abetting Bill O’Reilly, but that is all really just to make myself feel better. There is no point in arguing about the scientific or statistical validity of these commentators' content. The dissemination of useful information or the opening of a constructive debate, these things are not the point of these shows. The point of these shows is to create entertaining television through zealotry and emotional manipulation, a goal that they pull off in spades. Trouble is, lots of people take them seriously.

For now, I guess I’ll just go ahead and make dinner on the government’s dime. All I had to do was fill out several forms several times, take numerous trips for three-hour waits in a depressing county office, agree to keep them apprised of all future changes in my income, and allow them to send me lots of incomprehensible, contradictory, and vaguely threatening mail. But hey, freeloading isn’t free.