Grr...

Lot of anger in this stuff. Skip over it if you wish. Think I'm making important points though. Currently considering going for 8 poems today to make up for my off day. Maybe.


"Thoughts on your video game"
Toussaint is not the black Napoleon
nor Fanon the black Rousseau
but rather
they are
men of importance in their own right
who reached accomplishments
that speak for themselves.

And Ashley,
if you were a real person
and a contemporary,
would you often
at dinner parties
speak about all the nice minorities
who at least act white?

Because I'd like to know what that entails
other than
colonization
extermination
close-mindedness
or
hate.

Pardon me
for not smiling back
at the past
and my heritage.


"Industrialization"
The fancy-schmancy professor
who I found out three months later
was sleeping with my girlfriend
asked the class
what were the benefits of industrialization.

It was an essay question,
but I didn't much care for the man
so I turned in a sheet of paper
torn from my notebook
with the bullet points

colonialism
racism
sexism
war

and smart-assed poets who really don't have any idea what they think is good anymore
like moi.


"If I could be who you wanted all the time."
I
There is no more sought after metaphor
in this life I'm living
than that of the mirror--
some reflective surface
to tell me who I am.

We assume that certain things
are natural and not
learned like culture
to such an extent that
these days
I'm sure plenty of children
never ask the question
"Who am I?"
until college.

And internally I have no answers,
so it's the next conversation,
the next lust or uncertainty,
the next exam grade
telling me how I'm doing
explaining who
this person I know
must be.

II
Over all,
however,
unfortunately,
I have summed
only a tiny bit of knowledge
--a laughable amount, really--
a few "truths."

Which makes each new
exploration of someone else's psyche
a guessing game
of who does this person
want in its life.

I can't even tell you
if I like this six months'
growth of beard
and my increased disregard
for life itself
and I don't know if
this is me or if
I'm a puppet controlled by someone following a script.

III
Every talk we have
will be tempered by assumptions and judgment

But wouldn't it be great
if I could ask you
face to face
what you wanted

and mold myself
in regard to that mirror
as
The Man With No Name
or Tyler Durden,
your biology professor

or the high school boyfriend who you'd still be with if he hadn't gotten drunk at that one party, driven home, and crashed into his own garage door, and then his mother's Cadillac, suprisingly unhurt other than the fact that he's all but lost his face.


"TAPS"
It's raining out
so this one kid in my class
has to put socks on after arrival
because through his mocassins,
otherwise,
he'd be stuck with a lot of drenched wool.

In other news
I'm actually liking
these stylized rain boots
that have found their niche:
with their cute
rubber imitations of fabric--
an example of the importance
of appearance in our world.

And are these things
any less important
than the erasure mark
on the blackboard
that resembles her head
or the face on Mars?


"Dominance"
Your senior ex-boyfriend
that I beat the shit out of
in the bathroom
continuously screaming
"you fucking old man,"
that wasn't about you,
so please
stop presenting yourself to me now
as some sort of prize,
because,
goddamnit,
I don't want you.


"Our relationship as an abstract or surrealist or impressionist painting or something like that and please let me apologize for never being very knowledgeable when it comes to art"
I have the deadest eyes
in all of the SEC
and even though my SATs were shit
I've been heavily recruited.

I'm sought after
for all sorts of pranks
and lessons learned
because I can slump against a wall

in such a way
that
if I'm wearing loose enough clothing
even a forensics expert
would believe me a corpse.

So
I wear my sunglasses
day and night
unless I'm on a job

or in bed
with you
because you are the first person
to see my gift as just that

a funny little particularity
passed down by god
and not
just a means to an end.


"Skience"
Good news
everyone
just about twenty minutes ago now
humanity created a computer
that could read people's
mental make-up
by being fed
at least eighty percent
of the stuff
that these people wrote for public consumption.

And yeah,
I get it,
you just want to say
"yessiree Bob,
that's well and good,
but I don't really care."

So preemptively
I'm going to tell you
the importance of all this.

Consider the following
was Shakespeare a real person who wrote all those plays and things?
and how did he actually feel about his wife?

the machine can tell you that

or this one
how did Lincoln feel about slavery?
were his reasons for the Proclamation
purely materialist?

Maybe you can dig through his papers
and find the answer to that one
but in just a few seconds
the machine can tell you that.

And was Hitler or Stalin
a product of his environment?
If either of those two
were born today
in rural
like
I don't know
Kansas?
would they grow up
just like you or I
or would they turn into
Randall Flagg?
The machine can surely tell you all that.

And for three
small payments
of $999.99
you can buy this thing.

A fucking bargain,
man.


"Mythology"
Is it so wrong of me
to predict
that as regional culture
slowly dies
in a small
globalized community,
the world could be better
run under one governmental body?

If you want the truth
I guess I'd have to tell you
I'm not proud to be an American
because American
stands for both a lack of moderation
and a neo-cult worship
of assimilation
and even if I do love this country
I see myself as some sort of

post-nationalist.

That's just too much
for you,
isn't it?

I'm a blasphemer,
right?
Like Galileo
or Oscar Wilde?

But in reality
this sort of talk
disturbs my
moderate humility
and I am content
with a subtle
iconoclasm
that pales upon the appearance
of its lack of results

like a groundhog running from its shadow.