###WWI
Grabpa and Greenma
They’re veterans you know
They fought in the war
The big one
Wizard War One
Which was at the time called
World Wide Wizard War to End All Wizard Wars
But pretty quickly everyone figured
There would probably be more Wizard wars
And it would be embarrassing
To have to change the name
So they just called it Wizard War One
Knowing that someday they’d do a second one
Who knows maybe you’ll be in it
If you’re lucky 
Back before the war
When gropna and grelmaw were born 
Magic wasn’t real
They fought all wars with science
So you can imagine it was a pretty big deal
When Smelnok, the First Wizard
Came up with spells
In a way it’s commendable 
That it took 8 years before the war broke out
Before someone thought
What if we used these spells
To kill and maim each other
In new and whimsical ways
On a scale never before seen?
If we’re being honest though
Most of those 8 years
Was just everyone growing their beards out
Nobody wanted to fight in a wizard war
If they didn’t look the part
Plus everyone had to come up with
Plausible reasons to go to war
Besides that it seemed like fun
 And they wanted to see what’d happen
Anyways eventually they started blasting
And the war went on 
For an indeterminate amount of time
Due to the widespread use
Of temporal magicks 
By the end it was looking like
The Necromancers Legion
Under the reign of Larry The Lich Guy
Would sweep across the globe
Kill everyone just to bring them back
But then the ingenious Xarxes the Silly
Cast his War Ending Spell
Which made every spell make a farting noise
And smell really bad
The fighting quickly came to a halt
Which leads us into this tepid era of peace 
That we enjoy today
No one dares cast a spell in public
The ultimate taboo
It stinks so bad
When i was growing up
They’d practice down in the basement
Trying to undo the stinking stench
And it just soaked into the walls
I’d have friends over and they’d say
Your house smells like dookie poop 
I’d be so embarrassed 
But now i wish they’d have taught me
It sucks being in a wizard world
Without a spell to show for it
That’s why i got you this novice scroll
I don’t know what it does
But the guy at the shop said
It’s a pretty mild sulfur-y smell
Just promise only practice in the shed
I don’t want it stinking up the house
Happy birthday 

###genie timeline theory
When confronted with the wackadoo nature of this world
One feels 
Being of sound mind and body
Compelled to cook up a theory
Of how and why it could be this way
And how much longer it could go on
It’s how a rational mind 
Insofar as it is possible for a mind to be rational
Must cope with an irrational world
I’m frontloading this with self seriousness
Saying words like “must” and “insofar”
(I should have thrown an “ergo” in for good measure)
So that you can breathe a sigh of relief 
When i say i think a genie did it
I think we are living in a doomed wish reality
Someone rubbed a lamp
And did not word their desire carefully
And created this world
Seemingly shaped in such a way
To teach an important lesson
But whatever the lesson was
It had to have been clear by now
Look around 
Everything everywhere 
Is going from subtext to text
All the masks are off
The world is loudly and bluntly stating the obvious
So why are we still here
Lesson unlearned writ large 
Well i have some theories about that too
Some corollaries 
One is that the wish was made by an idiot
And our reality is forced to warp
To become unsubtle enough
For the worlds dumbest guy to understand
Or maybe the lesson was learned ages ago
And the genie granted the third wish
To go back to how things were
And this wishmaker zapped back
To before he ever rubbed on that lamp
But all of us here stay stranded
In this godless loose thread of a timeline 
Persisting via momentum
A dead end branch in the tree of time
Which will bear no fruit
And my final theory is 
That the wish was made
At some point in the far future
And we’re just living in the backstory
Setting the stage for the protagonist
To zap into the year 2831
And see the consequences of their wish
That Jesus 2 was never born
Or something like that
We’ll never know
Which blows
Only loophole i can think of 
Is if we got here via genie 
Maybe some other wish can get us out
Monkeys paws and shooting stars
Birthday candles and dandelions
I’m wishing on them all
I’m wishing Godzilla was real
And that he’s smashing up everything i don’t like
If that’s not the world you wanna live in
I suggest you make your own wish

###for Christmas i want
Well i sure would like
For my arms to get as long as
A city block or so
So i can reach anything i want
Within a block or so
And while we’re in the arm area
Maybe big huge muscles too
So i can crush anything i need to
Within arms reach
Which is quite large now
Hell
Why not double down
Give me big long muscular legs too
But of course that would make me
Look far too spiderlike
So make my body big too
Proportional pretty please
And i know this is a big ask but
Let me just rattle off
A few more things I’d like
Big sharp teeth to bite and chew
Laser eyes to look at you
Scales and spikes and horns
And wings and claws and tusks
An impenetrable hide
A resistance to flame
A big hungry growling stomach
A horrible roar
A thundering presence 
The ability to strike fear
In the heart of anyone i wish
Just by the sound of my stomp
And my leitmotif
I also want a leitmotif by the way
I want the power to destroy 
And the wisdom to be judicious
For Christmas what i want is
To become a big huge horrible monster
With every single power
And no weaknesses
And if they don’t have that
A $50 gift card is fine

###sit on a panopticon otis
You’re in the middle of the
Inside-out panopticon 
Dancing your ass off
Sweating bad
Huffing puffing
And nobody’s watching
It’s not good or bad
The dancing 
And besides it doesn’t matter
Because everyone’s turned their backs
Politely
Leaving you this small void
A ten foot diameter 
With nobody watching 
Like the supermassive black hole
At the center of the galaxy
It all orbits around you
You dark star
Shining so darkly 
Keep it all to yourself
It’s better that way
You alone
Allowed to be
By the grace of closed eyes
Eyelids pointed your way saying
I’m not touching you I’m not touching you
And if you close your eyes too
Maybe something magic happens
Maybe you snap out of existence
Only thing keeping you tethered 
Was the itch of somebody else watching
From behind your eyes
Or maybe you just feel silly
Dancing with your eyes closed
Spinning around dizzy
At least you’d know
What it’s like to be 
All on your own

###company is sort of like fish, after three days they start to stink. And they have a duty to the shareholders to produce a profit quarter over quarter. Also. Just like fish. Companies. Fish Co. idk
If you don’t like the pasta
You can send it back to the chef
And he will make another pasta
But with more spit in it this time
If you don’t like the fish
Well you can take that up with 
Ocean Jones
The man who owns
All the oceans
Bought them up dirt cheap
Back in the 40s
When all the troubles were happening
And it turned out to be a great investment 
He’s made his money back
A billionfold
Now that every fish is paying rent
Every beach is paying taxes
And every shark is on the payroll
Used to be 
In the way back before
That nobody owned the ocean 
It belonged to itself
But that was inefficient
Ocean Jones
Who was just called
Landlubber Jones
Before he got into the ocean stuff
He streamlined the whole thing
Vertical and horizontal integration
He bought out Poseidon and Neptune
And now they’re all subsidiaries 
Of Jones Incorporated
 I heard about a guy
Who went out swimming late at night
Without renting a subscription
They found him harpooned through the heart
Out on the docks

Uhm
Yeah that’s about as much as I’ve got
On this premise
Basically imagine 
There’s a guy called ocean jones
And he owns all the oceans 
More likely than you might think
It could happen here
If we let it

###facing the devil and walking backwards into the kingdom of heaven
Gotta keep an eye out for selener
Red skinned devil fella
Pitchfork and all
Looks a little sad to see me go
But he loves to watch me leave
I’m doing Coldplay the scientist
I’m doing missy elliot work it
Ti esrever dna ti pilf nwod gnaht ym tup i
I walk the upward spiral staircase
Trip and fall all the way to the top
Saint Peter says my shirts on backwards
Little does he know
My everything else is backwards
My shirt is fine like it is
I stop before proceeding 
Through the shiny golden gates
Into some vague bright light
Enshrined in clouds
I say Pete why’d you put the gate up
Why is heaven enclosed
He tells me heaven is wide open
This is the gate to be let out of the world
The fence encircles it all
Earth and Hell
And all the other planets
Along with their respective hells
I get distracted thinking about
What color mars hell would be
Because red is already taken by regular mars
Pete’s still talking though
So i tune back in
He tells me it’s just heaven anyways
The big white void
Where everyone is happy and mills around 
Being happy and smiling
And no matter what they say
There are dogs and cats and fish here
And they are happy too
Everything that was still is 
Permanent
But it’s really just a staging area
For you to get ready for superheaven
Where you become one with everything
This is just a place for you to stop being scared
Of no longer being
Enclosed
In a single body a single soul
Take care of your unfinished business
If you wish it
Go down as a ghost or phantom
A type of bird they knew you liked
Hang around for a bit and see the sights
And when you are ready
You’ll know
Dissipate into the everything
Paradise
Welcome back

###cheers
Another Wednesday night
At the neighborhood bar
Looking alluring and nonbinary
Your nonbinary friend calls you
To ask if you want to go tonight
And you were already on your way there
Trailing behind two lesbians in cool outfits
Who evidently are headed there too
Everyone wearing bandannas
Is milling around saying
I like your bandana
To the other bandana wearers
There’s plenty to go around
Order food from the guy that knows you
Order beer from the guy that knows you
Read your little book
Draw your little pictures
Leave your phone behind the bar charging
Because there’s people here to talk to
Someone who remembers you
More than you do them
And vice versa
By the time your friend gets here
You’re already funny 
Holding court with their mutual friends
Bartender buying your drinks
This is normal to a guy like you
A regular

###the winner
I look outside and cough
I can’t see across the street
From the wildfire haze
Vindicated again
I pump my fist
I’ve gotten to be the kind of person
Who loves talking about the weather
Because it puts me within arms reach
Of my favorite topic
Without giving the game away
Coldest summer for the rest of our lives
I wink
It’s awesome to be correct so often
So frequently proven right
This will happen when you think about things
And then you say them out loud
Well maybe not for you
But for me it does
The way i move through this world
Like a red hot steel ball
Curdling through butter
Why is it actually 
Lowkey satisfying to watch 
My steak too subsidized 
My hot knife too buttery 
My lobster too living
I think about it for a moment
And decide it’s fine to kill it
My karma will permit one kill
I saved a monarch yesterday
Butting its head against the glass
I cupped it in my hand 
And it yielded
We had an understanding
That i was there to help
When we made it out in the open
It lingered for a second
Before flying off
Immediately obliterated by semi truck
Black cloud of exhaust
I tried  
I start to spiral
But unlike many of you
My spiral goes up
Upward spiral
A moment of kindness
Before being smashed to smithereens
Not a bad way to go out
Way to go me
Victorious again
I start choking on the air again
Stop coughing for long enough
To point at the stained sky and say
Uhhhh that’s not very good actually
Then the csi Miami theme
Starts playing in my head
So i put on my sunglasses
Even though the sun is blotted out
When something bad happens
I win because i knew it
When something good happens
I win because i wanted it to
My home is full of trophies and medals
My mouth is full of soot
There are two kinds of people in this world
Me
And everyone else
Catch up sucker

###treehouse!
There’s is a tree growing
Underneath my building
And I’m content to leave it that way
I went downstairs and found its leaves
Pushing upwards through the floor
I felt the building shake
The floors shift
As this great tree sprouts from the earth
I don’t see any reason to move
I stick a shim under the legs of the furniture
I adjust the pictures on the wall
And i keep on living
Just like that tree
None of us has any more right
To take up space in this lot
Than the other
This section of our one and only earth
Does not belong to god anymore
It belongs to a guy called Land Lord
And like god he’s nowhere to be found
No place is permanent
Did you think that this brick facade
Would stand still in the winds of time
Through centuries of entropy
This building alone would remain
If you did you were stupid
But now you can learn
That all things crumble
I was never going to live here forever
Just as long as i could
Same as this blooming tree
Who despite all i know about plants
Has taken root in the concrete foundation
Six feet deep
Taken water from the pipes
Taken sunlight from the cracks in the floor
And decided to live 
As long as it can
So my plan for now
So much as i have one
Is to stay here
As the tree picks up the building
So long as the floors are somewhat level
And i can still watch tv
I’ll stay here in this place
And when it’s time to go I’ll move on
Let the tree have it
I’m sick of paying rent besides
Trees have roots
People are meant to move around

###self mutiny
The guy at the helm
Well he was only there by default
Because when everyone else got quiet 
He started talking loud and pointing
Which by some metrics is leadership
But he is an anxious man
Hardly knowledgeable about the sea
That he’s gotten us this far
Is a miracle of Neptune 
What we need is what we’ve needed all along
A captain
Not just some guy to steer the ship
A man with confidence and swagger
Who knows all about these waters 
He’s seen a thing or two
He knows what he’s doing 
Because he’s done it before
Someone with sea legs 
To walk up to the helmsman
Grab him by the shoulder 
And say it’s alright mate
Look at me
Look at me
I’m the captain now

###tortoise v hare 2: deathmatch at kill mountain
I only have one idea
And it’s not a particularly original one
But it’s clanging in my head
Clang clang clang
Every day because
Despite what we know to be true
Despite all the evidence
All the common sense
All the reason in the world
Wisdom
Whatever happened to wisdom
Despite it all
Everyone’s rooting for the hare
They’re betting beaucoup bucks on the hare
Saying that not only will he win this race
He’s going to win them all
In perpetuity
Breeding like rabbits
They let them run rabid
Rampant and wild 
Each new hare begets ten
And tenfold beyond that
They are making a graph
Showing the number of hares
Projecting into the future saying
If things keep on at this pace
Which they will
Forever
Soon 450% of earths biomass
Will be rabbits
Bet on it
Nobody cares about tomorrow
Nobody cares about carrying capacity
Nobody took seventh grade science
Nobody listened in kindergarten 
The hare doesn’t win
He can’t
Sos i built a giant mecha-tortoise
To destroy everything
Slowly, deliberately

###i promise that i can be trusted with the doomsday button
I promise that i can be trusted with
The Doomsday Button
I won’t press it
I really won’t press it
I’m swearing to you now that i 
Really won’t press it
Unless 
I have to
And even then
I’ll just hover my finger over the button
I’ll give us a chance to fix things
Before i slam that button down
I’m the right one to have the button
I won’t go nuts with it
I’ll just use it as incentive
To get things back on track
Nobody wants a doomsday
Least of all me
But if things don’t go my way
Well
We’re headed towards doomsday anyways 
So what if we gave me the button
With the button i could set things right
I could skip the line at six flags
I wouldn’t 
That’s not something i would do
I could walk into a board room
You know the type
Where they dictate 
How many people must die
In exchange for how many dollars
I will wave this button in their faces and say
Smarten up guys
Smarten up
Or I’ll kill us all right now
And then I’d probably make them all eat poop
Stuff like that
Good for the soul of mankind
Rich guys eating poop
I’d walk around like Johnny DoomsdayButtonSeed
Telling people to 
Smarten up
Do the right thing
Knock that off
Or Else
Eventually everybody would
Get on the right page
My page
And i could just sit lazily by my button
Drinking bloody marys on the beach
While everyone just went around
Doing the right thing
Knowing
If they stopped
If anyone stopped
I’d blow us all to kingdom come

###having a really productive phone call with my stock broker 
I’m not on Wall Street
I’m not on gambling dot com
But I’m making my investments 
I’m placing my stock in
What i can actually trust
Self evident truths
That my heart is in the right place
Beneath my sternum i think
As well as on my sleeve
And a number of other locales
That if you cut me in half
I have enough heart to go around
And like a worm I’d half and double
All at once
That a city ought to be like a forest
That the natural state is commensalism 
Balance mutualism community
That there lies a malignant strain
An offshoot of my lineage 
Which like locusts want to swarm the earth
Pillage and ravage and proliferate
Infinite growth hand over hand over fist
Invasive and virulent 
Creating waste of the land 
And trusting their own crooked wisdom
To tell them when they’ve gone too far
That we will win against this strain
That we are not alone
Because we can’t be
We is plural
That there is no such thing as deserving
No such thing as worth
That we are here at all
To sing and hold hands
All else a blip
That i have something to contribute
I can and will help 
That good is obvious
And evil dubious and convoluted 
That what ought to be is simple 
Easy and forthcoming 
And ought not be fought
That you should know
The names of birds and trees
And your other neighbors
Whatever shape they take
That there is time enough to fix this
Leave it better than you found it
That we can’t count on god to punish evil
Because god is busy in heaven 
And the devil doesn’t punish evil
He loves that stuff
That you can only treat the symptoms 
For so long before
You need to take responsibility 
For feeding all those cats to coyotes
That dogs are good judges of character
That you should smile at babies
Even after they’ve grown up
I’m doubling down on all of that
I’d stake my name on it
My vast fortunes and riches 
Bet it all on red
I’m feeling lucky

###one must imagine archimedes happy
I was born a baby
The best way to be born
But i didn’t stay that way no
I groad up
Which is actually very easy
All it requires is
Constant effort in all directions
At every moment indefinitely
If you didn’t do this
You would be crushed
By the weight of atmosphere
And this is why
If you stepped into 
The vacuum of space
You would explode
So accustomed to pushing
You can’t stop when nothing pushes back
One must imagine Sisyphus 
Slapping his big boulder shaped belly
Burping as he takes another lap
Up and down the mountain 
Singing a song about the way it is to be
I, Sisyphus,
Free

###saturn return
Saturn 
Oaf
Sits tracing his finger in the dust
And lonely he has an idea
An idea too big for his small mind
And so it bursts from his forehead
Fully formed 
A son
A girl son
He liked this son so
That he thought to make another
And plucked out his rib
Folded in his hands 
Et voila 
Another son
With his head and ribs hurting he considered
Maybe just one more
And this one he just made 
By spitting in the dirt
And clumping it together
Add a drop of blood and
Clump son done
As you can imagine
This was not his last son
He went on making them
Piece by piece of himself
Plucked off and spent
Until he was just eyes and a mouth
And two big hands
At which point he saw his mistake
Valley clouded with sons
Clambering around aimless
So he raged at them
And of course he gobbled them up
Tried to stack them in the places
Where they ought to have come from
And of course this did not last 
His sons pulled him apart from within
And fell to the ground fully divided
No more Saturn just his parts
Split to go their separate ways
Have their own sons and so on
But still underneath
In each fragmented piece of the oaf
A pull a magnetism
Drawing them together
Enemy of entropy
Old Saturn
Trying to return 

###trick pony
He’s a one trick pony
Okay????
And???
One trick is a lot
When you are just a little pony
Go on pony do your trick
Yayyyyy
I clap at your trick
I ask you do it again again
And he does his trick
Over and again
Does it to death
Really beats that thing like a 
Well 
Like a 
You know
A dead horse

###sun in retrograde
After a long night of ingratiating myself 
With people who already like me
I do my little dance
I cast my little spell
And the sun rises at night
I drink myself to life
Stumble sober back home 
Storm in so you can yell at me
Quieter and quieter 
Til we’re just talking over dinner
Nothings wrong 
I sit back and watch
As you uncook our meal
Split up all of the ingredients
Sort them into their own containers
When you’re done i ask
If you wanted any help
Now that my stomach is empty
I go back to work 
I hunch at my desk 
Spitting coffee in a mug
Until I’m tired 
I speed home
So i can put the toothpaste
Back in the tube
Mess up my hair
Roll into bed
And as the sun sets
Close my eyes
Thinking 
Yeah
That’s how it should’ve gone

###dracula rules
I need to be invited in
I need your permission 
I need to be wanted
I need to be allowed 
That’s like Dracula rules 
I say
Not realizing I’m saying something
Kind of sad and pathetic
At this house party 
Before that can dawn on me
Somebody says
Yeah you’re right
DRACULA RULES!!!
Then everyone goes in the kitchen 
There he is Lord Dracula
The pale specter in all his darkness
Doing a kegstand
DRA-CU-LA
They cheer
He’s sucking up beer like blood
Under his cloak and cummerbund 
He’s wearing a shirt that says 
BEER IS LIKE BLOOD TO ME
AND IM DRACULA
SO I DRINK BLOOD
Goddamn he’s cool
Always living in the moment
Because he doesn’t show up in photos
This coolness only exists 
Right here right now
Oh
Oh damn
He’s biting down on Declan
Yeah he’s drinking his blood
Damnnnn
It’s getting awkward now
Declan’s doing a thumbs up but
He’s looking weary
He’s going pale and shriveled
Okay yeah this sucks now
Everybody is getting scared
Declan falls limp to the linoleum floor
Everyone screams
Dracula shrugs 
This is vhat i do guyes
You invited me
Not my fault
Not my freaking fault
This is a cautionary tale 
If you give a mouse a cookie
He’s gonna eat the damn cookie
If you invite a Dracula in
He’s going to drink all your beer
Then he’s going to drink all your blood
The end

###clone jones and the doppler gang
Clone Jones runs a mean gang 
South of Gene Street
They call themselves the Doppler Gang
You can spot them by their colors
Red when they're coming right at you
Blue as they flee the scene 
They all look plausibly similar 
Enough to give the cops a hard time
Getting anything to stick
They booked Jones last summer
For street racing
Nyoooooomm
He was back on the street in a week
Sporting baby smooth skin
And another tally on his neck tattoo
Everybody in the neighborhood knows
If you wanna get your hands on
Some genuine stem cells
A vial of thymine or guanine
You can find one of the Doppler boys
Down at the corner of 46th and Dolly 
They’ve got a longstanding feud 
With the Haploid Crew over westside
Bad blood between em
Ever since way back when
They all used to run with Bobby Banks
But split up when he died 
Bled out in a botched robbery
Clutching onto a bag of cash
The burlap kind with a big $ on it
Buddy of mine was there that day
He was just making a deposit
He says the Haploid Brothers split
The second the first shot was fired
Jones had a mind to go down fighting
And if it wasn’t for Bobby he would have
This buddy of mine
Old timer, retired from the force
Real good, honest guy
Officer Frank Blundt 
He hasn’t seen nothing like that
Since way back in the day he tells me 
Back when Domino Joe and the Pushover Kids
Just about took over this whole city
They were overwhelmed 
Outgunned and outmatched 
But the second Joe fell
The rest of them toppled
Frank retired not too long after that
His brothers
Kurt and Ernest
Gave speeches at his party
Short, but sweet
Then we all sang the his favorite song
About that cowboy gambler
That lost all his money
Betting on a three legged mutt
Double Down Dan and The One Dollar Dog:
Ohh Dan you better run
Faster than all of their guns
Cuz Dollar Bill is gonna shoot you dead
You won all of your money back
And then you doubled down
On the only three leg dog
In this town
Yeehaw

###moneymouth
Put my mouth where my money is
Trifold in my back pocket
Open for you always 
Honest 
I swear
Shit fuck and other cusses too
That kind of stuff
Just vocabulary to me
And when i pinky swear i mean it
Even if you don’t
I promise you
I’m lying 
In wait 
Calling my shot like
I got next 
Don’t make me feel stupid
I’m not
I took a test and it said
Not Stupid
I’ve got the certificate 
On the fridge back home 
I’ll show if you come over
Come over
I’ve been training 
I don’t know Kung Fu 
But that’s not the only kind of fu 
I made my very own fu
Watch me do my
Fu for you
I’m waiting
World wide like the web
Double w
That’s 
4 u

###Norwood IV
All of your hair falling out
Is a recession indicator
That hairline is retreating
Running for the hills 
Pull out your phone and bet on it
The phone talks to you
In a woman’s voice
Or you’d assume
That’s a woman’s voice
It’s been a while 
It (she) tells you
Gamble Gamble Gamble
Bet against other bald guys
To see who will go baldest first
All your bets are going south
So you start ripping out your hair
Market manipulation
Bet on how much it hurts
Softly patting your bleeding scalp
This is how the big dogs do it
Make their millions
You’re not just gambling — you’re training
Says your phonewoman
Training to be the richest man in the world
And the baldest man in the world
When that day arrives
And the last hair is plucked
You will be happy
You just know it

###may i please be excused from the table
Sat at dinner once again
And down the long stretch dining table
Once again i can’t spy anyone
Who hasn’t shoved their cutlery
Into one or both of their oversized nostrils
They’re all talking at once
Sounding nasally, saying nothing
Out comes the waitstaff to serve us
Looking as miserable as usual 
They do not lift their heads enough
To meet my gaze
And i fail to think of a gaze
That can say anything other than
I’m guilty
The food is immaculate 
Expertly prepared and arranged
From the finest and rarest ingredients
And these beasts that sit among me
They grab it by the fistful
Smear it across their chests
Shove it down their throats
Hack and cough it up onto the table
They are inept and incompetent 
Unable to even feed themselves
But they won’t even let me pity them
For they are more cruel by far
Than they are stupid
They stab one another with forks
Grope at the waitstaff
They scream and wail
And through the incoherence 
You can hear the anger 
The indignation at their cushy lot in life 
Tonight i have decided to fast
My stomach will growl
And maybe for a moment
I will get to feel alive
Like i am a body
A living thing 
But i will be expected back tomorrow night
And inevitably i will be hungry 
I will fold my napkin in my lap
And do my best to savor the taste
Prime rib of an extinct omnivore 
The last one if I’m not mistaken 
I’ll say thank you to the server
Who does not speak my language
This language of mine
That has no word for gratitude
No word for understanding
No word for remorse
I might try to tap my glass
Raise and give a stirring sermon
Tell those who share in this communion 
I do not think we deserve to eat
We pigs at this table
Have ravaged this place
Stripped and hoarded all the scraps
We were born fat and grow fatter still
Off the spoils of wars fought on our behalf
Not a single one of us on the line
The labor that sustains us 
That keeps us here in hedonistic stupor
The hands that feed us loathe us
But fear over loathing
That we will take our bulging hooves
Engorged by excess and greed
And stamp down on them the many
Who hold no power or material wealth
Who have nothing that isn’t leased from us
Even violence itself is something we own
We ought not eat
I’d sooner starve than go on this way
I’d sooner starve than be fed on your behalf
I do not want this
May i please be excused from the table
And if i had said it
Put it like that
They’d stare 
Wall eyed and blank
Snot dripping
And they would laugh
Like Beavis and Butthead
And I’d go quiet
Push my food around the plate with my fork
They’ll soon start serving human meat
And I’ll be too spineless to refuse
Until all that is left
The only organic matter
Is that which has ballooned around
Each and every chair at this table
They will turn at each other
Ripping and tearing and eating one another
And i will turn on myself 
Ouroborowing 
In some misguided attempt
At this late stage in the game
To spare myself from the sin
Of doing harm

###none of my business casual
I wasn’t given MLK Day off at work
And nobody said a thing
Nobody had a thought about it
They are trying to drive me insane
I get 8 holidays off a year
And this is not one they recognize
Isn’t that strange
Doesn’t that indicate something
To anyone other than me
Please
Don’t make me feel alone here
There’s a detention center in Broadview
Holding captives 
Refusing them medical care
Declaring them inhuman
And nobody says anything about it
It doesn’t even matter 
Not to anyone in this room
Sat at any of these cubicles
They don’t seem to notice
They don’t seem to care
Another person was murdered by the state
And nobody said a thing
Nobody had any grief over it
They didn’t even seem to know
This scares me
Really truly makes me scared
I suppose there is enough apathy here
In this office complex
To tolerate anything
To permit anything
And i suppose
It will go on this way
Until it doesn’t 

###cow tools
Scientists have reported 
The first known case
Of tool use 
In cows
Which must mean they are smart
Funny to me because 
Science 
As a broad concept
Is painted as this 
Infallible, unbiased, objective lens
Which you can use to analyze 
And measure the world with
The practice of Science
Is one that is meant to look
Futuristic, evolved
Greater than the sum of human thought
But then you poke around and
A lot of the time
Running right along the spine
Is this value system
Which makes us seem small and dumb
It says
We are humans
And therefore humans are good
We are smart
And therefore smart is good
And smart is whatever we do
If it is like us it is good
If it is unlike us
It is less good
We use tools
And so we are smart
So if a cow uses a tool
It must be somewhat human
Humans have souls and go to heaven
A place where everyone is very similar
I think this kind of thinking
Is innate to the human mind
It’s the kind of thinking
That killed Homo neanderthalensis
It’s the kind of thinking 
That is killing us even now
And without recognizing it
Naming and resisting it
We are doomed to continue killing
Anything unlike us
And that scope will continue shrinking
Until it’s each man for themself 
And the world ends
Barren
Two men stabbing each other to death 
Bleeding out in the same pool of blood

###the beast game
Gun to your head
What would you do
If 100 animals
From $1 to $100,000
Were in a cage 
In the worlds biggest trap
Above a spike pit
And you could push the button to drop them
OR
You could not push that button
What would you do
And what would it say
About your psychology
This is very interesting to me
Mister Beans

Gun to my head
I would focus on the gun
Who’s holding the gun
Who has gathered these animals
Of all variety of monetary value
Who has manufactured the cages 
Who has installed the spikes
Who wired up the button
Who has placed us in opposition
Why is there a gun pointed at me
Who are you
If i too am trapped here
How am i different from the animals
How am i liable for a choice
When i can not make it voluntarily
There is no coin
The coin has no say
It’s just Anton Chigurh
Sat in the chair gonna murder me
Just Jimmy Donaldson
Pointing us at one another
And hoping we don’t see him there
Atop his beastly pile of unlimited wealth
And we won’t
We never do
The only way to win is to play
The only way to play is to lose
Your dignity and your direction
Your sense of self and safety
Your ability to see
They shouldn’t be allowed to do this
It’s cruel

All this and more 
Every Wednesday Night
On Amazon Prime
Beast Games

###$100 Burger
All of this
All of this pain and suffering
The bloodshed and war waging
The erosion of the fabric 
Of the world you know and —— tolerate
It is targeted 
Oriented at a single shared goal
Which is 
To create a $100 burger
Now there’s nothing special about this burger
You’ve had dozens, hundreds of burgers
(Damn! Burger boy)
On par or greater than this ultimate burger
The difference 
The only difference
Is that you’re paying a hundred dollars for it
Now
They will kill anyone
They will spare no expense 
In bulldozing the world
Reshaping it into one
Where you are willing to pay
One hundred dollars
For a regular burger
The leader of your 
Opposition party
Will get on the nightly news
Sponsored by Global Burger Inc.
And announce bravely
Pointing his thumb at the screen
At you
That he will be creating a panel
To look into the possibility
Of a $99 burger
And you will know then
In your empty living room
All of the screaming out of earshot
That you are fucked
You’ll be paying for that burger
All one hundred dollars
And you’ll be happy about it
Or you won’t eat at all

###tar jay
The concrete sphere
Out front Target at the strip mall
It used to be a planet
Teeming with life 
Not there’s many other ways to “teem”
All variety of ecosystems
Rivers and lakes and waterfalls
Forests and deserts and oceans
The Target corporation 
Built a big telescope 
A big space ship
And a big space sucker
Capable of sucking
Even in the vacuum of space
They found this planet
And many like it
Sucked it up
Painted layer after layer of red paint
Until it was perfectly sphere
Then they placed it out front like a bollard
It is not infrastructure 
It is a head on a pike
A trophy of war
They are winning and gloating
So you see officer
I’ve committed no crime
This so called vandalism as you say
Is an act of righteous justice
Now help me push
Once we get to the top of the hill
We can let it roll back down
Point it right at the target
Bullseye