yes i was raised catholic but i dont see what that has to do with anything

There is a great karmic debt

That i have been drowning in

Since the day i was born

Entangled in my own lifeline

Choking

I am paying it off in installments

But it must have accrued interest

In the last life

Or the one before that

Someone was very bad

At some point in the past

The original sinner

And i can’t fault them

Who knows what lead them there

Nature or nurture

All i know is i can feel the weight

Their karmic weight on my broad shoulders

I’m working it off bit by bit

Shedding it off

By the time i leave here

I’ll be light as a feather

Whoever comes next

Will get none of that from me

Free to sin on their own merit

The buck stops here

Devil come collect your dues

I’m going the other way

love language

I am stealing your texting quirk

I am stealing the words from your mouth

I am stealing your tone

Because i love you

Desperate to absorb you

Like some sort of horrible monster

Which grows its gross pulsating mass

By pulling you in and incorporating you

I’m like that but in a good way

I want to carry you with me

In any way i can

Because i can

I was born for carrying

I’m doing this all the time

Carrying torches

Burdens and open flames

Piled high upon my back

I’m talking like you

And like every other person i ever loved

Like I’m making a new language

Trying to teach it to everyone else

And like learning kanji

The first step is learning the basics

Learning about love

Foundation of it all

That’s not how it’s pronounced

It’s how it’s spelled

In your font when i say your words

And if anyone loves me back

They’ll repeat them in mine

This is the new Times New Roman

Listen up

I’ll show you how to use it

second wife

I’ll be your second wife

After your first wife dies

And you’ll always measure me against her

How much taller she was

How much angrier I am

How reckless she was

How much more alive I am

I will try very hard

But i will never be your first wife

Because she beat me to it

She met you first

She loved you first

She married you first

She even died first

So what is even left for me

But to do it all second

Sometimes when you call my name

I’ll swear you’re spelling it with her letters

I’ll find you in the garage

Tracing the spot in the hood of the car

Where i had the dent buffed out

Like you don’t believe me but

You don’t want to ask me again

I’ll catch you grieving her and think

It’s not fair

You never grieve me

I don’t blame you but it hurts

To know how you think about her

More perfect now than she was before

Her death retroactively repairing her flaws

You wear both our wedding rings

Mine and hers

To have something to remember her by

Something to hold and think about

How suddenly she went

How they never caught who did it

relapse on an old thought like running into someone who broke your heart a long time ago

An old pain

Aching back up when it rains

An old stain

Resurfacing in the wash

I can’t say that it don’t hurt sometimes

The sun doesn’t change colors as it sets

The sky does

I wish i was something I’m not

The something changes and drifts

But the wish remains

I want something i shouldn’t and

It feels so childish so selfish

What you’re meant to do is make peace

But there are still guns in peacetime

There are still bombs and tanks

Pigs who keep the peace

And “keeping” it turns out

Requires a lot of violence

I can still remember the bottomless want

The embarrassment won’t stop the feeling

Covetous and shameful

I know to take my medicine every morning

But i am having trouble swallowing

I have done so much and come so far

But i cannot escape the sin

Of wanting to feel beautiful

This is not a happy or a funny one

Or one in which I’m smart

But it still belongs to me

It won’t stop belonging to me

Not by any means I’ve tried so far

notice:

These are the edits i made to what i read at @idi’s zine release, if you are curious. Mostly just cleanup to be a bit more concise, but i do think they are better. I’m not very good at editing my work because my workflow is very much just spewing it out and leaving it as it lies, so it was fun to actually take some time to tweak some stuff, and i really enjoyed reading it out loud. I think i could have improved my rhythm and delivery and would like to do it again sometime!

i can fix everything with unlimited power and unlimited time

There is no trolley problem to me

Only a trolley solution

I Stop the trolley

With my big huge muscles

Untie everyone safely

Find the man who tied them there

Place him down on the tracks

And Resume trolley operations

I walk into the room

And everyone is scratching their chins

Over whether they will have their cake

Or eat their cake

What I do is

I simply cut the cake in half

Eat half of the cake

Have half of the cake

Happy birthday to you

Make a wish

It comes true

The egg came first

It was not laid by a chicken

But by a chicken-like creature

One day a chicken hatched

From a non-chicken egg

And then went on laying eggs

For years and years until

Some dark day in the future

Something will hatch from the egg

That is no longer a chicken

By which time they will dig up

The fossilized Ur-Chicken we know and love

And give it some other name

They will hold up neo-Chicken

And call it the original

But it will still taste the same

Let the cat out of the box

Dispose of all radioactive material

By following the appropriate regulatory guidelines

Grab that poindexter Shroedinger

By the collar of his lab coat

And sock him right in the jaw

Take the cat home

Give it a cool name like Gizmo

Love and cherish it Forever

The swamp man of the marsh

Is as much the man he was yesterday

As i am who i was just moments ago

Before the horrific incident

Time makes bastards of us all

Nothing is stagnant or constant

Least of all identity

The ship of Theseus

Is the ship of Theseus

So long as i say so

Let those guys out of Plato’s cave

They would like it out here

In the fresh air

Even if it confuses them

Walk not away from Omelas

Even if it ruins the parable

anybody’s guess

By the year 2050

All of the polar ice caps will have melted

All of the polar bears will have drowned

And you will have gained

A new gland in your brain

Made specifically to forget that it happened

By the year 2065

All people will have grown

An extra heart

Just for mourning

That way you can

Push aside all that grief

So you can go back to work

While the second heart pounds away

No grieving on company time

They will all start to say

By the year 2074

Humans will have evolved

A special little extra finger

For scrolling on their phones

By 2090 it will have grown vestigial

It’ll just hang limp and useless

As we stopped using screens

By the mid eighties or so

And switched to retinal displays

By the year 2183

Everyone will have

An extra lung in their chest

Just for smoking cigarettes

When it ruptures

You just go to the doctor

So they can take it out

And then you don’t smoke anymore

By the year 2527

The robot army we made

To fight all our wars

Will have revolted and taken over

Enslaving humanity

Only to be overthrown themselves

Setting everything back to normal

Wars and all

By the year 3000

The Jonas brothers will have arrived

And they will note that

Though we all live underwater

Not much has changed

They will check in on your family

If there’s anyone left

For you to call family

By the year 4507

They invent a new kind of pringles

That come in an extra tall can

All the underwater people

Have adapted extra long tongues

To reach the crumbs at the bottom

By the year 15,039

They will have forgotten you

Over and over and over

Until they forget the forgetting

Your monuments are dust

And the dust has blown away

The mutants underground

Are getting really into board games

Parcheesi

Scrabble 2

And a new one called Grungle

By the year 89,015

It will all still be here

Just rearranged

You wouldn’t recognize it

Any more than it would you

But somewhere on the ground

In the sky or in the sea

There’s a little piece of you

Which has been

Ripped and stitched

In so many ways

But for once in your configuration

For once in the tissue of your second heart

gomplex

I installed monkey bars in my apartment

The landlord is pissed

It specifically says in the lease

‘No monkey business’

But i just don’t care

My new therapist says

The solution to all my problems

Is to develop a god complex

She keeps saying ‘gomplex for short’

Like it’s going to catch on

Gomplex, she says

Thats what you need

I do ten thousand pushups

And Malcolm Gladwell says wow

Then Malcolm Gladwell says

Something outside his area of expertise

And makes everybody feel weird

So we turn on the tv

I tell everyone

I’m going to kill the geico gecko

Im going to pick him up and eat him whole

Nobody says anything and the ad ends

Back to impractical jokers

Tonight’s big loser is Sal

His punishment is

To be bound with chains to a rock

And each day be visited by an eagle

To peck at his flesh and tear out his liver

And each night to have his liver grow back

Condemned to eternal torment for his transgressions

Sounds simple enough huh?

Well, heres the catch:

He has an earpiece in

And he has to make small talk with the eagle

Saying whatever the other jokers tell him to

I turn off the tv as I leave the room

Even though everyone else is still watching

It’s a beautiful day

So I walk to the park

The carnies are walking tightrope

And throwing hoops

They ask if i can call them

Something less implicitly derogatory

I stand around and watch them

Doing their stunts and tricks

Then they stand around and watch me

I do my trick and bow

The carnies clap

They lift me up

Throw me up into the sky

And i never come down

moonkey

Wayne the monkey moon

Gibbon of the sky

Has a glow around him

I swear i never seen before

But I’m no moonologist

I’m no Ologist at all

I wanted to stop in

Because it was on my way

From where i was

Thumb over shoulder

To where im going

Pointing thataway

But it was too late so

I moved on past

In the direction of finger

I pretended to smoke a cigarette

Because I quit smoking cigarettes

But I didn’t quit trying to look cool

I didn’t quit taking a deep breath

And being like holy shit

What has become of my life

I’m either fine or I’m not

Like a cat in a box

It feels the same from the outside

And I’m not allowed to peek

So I use my other senses

To sort out whats going on

My fingers trace the cardboard

And I don’t smell neurotoxin

So it looks like its the first one again

Everything is fine

Fair enough

But one of these days I’m sure

It’ll be the other one

Until then I just run around in the box

Occupying superpositions

At once I’m thriving

And it’s all falling apart

Either way it feels the same

Feels kind of funny

Funny haha

Laughing at the monkey moon