The listener

 Voices in my head mask the listener who sits silently amused. 

As she took a deep breath, I realized it was mine as my heart stopped

All I could see was the future as she whisked by me in a haze

Blind a breathless I felt numb, until her touch ignited my soul to rise 

I’m speechless for the first time, realizing I’ve never been more honest

This was the rest of my life, and I couldn’t see nothing but you

I love this space we share, no words, no touch, just our souls dancing in a gaze

And then the world rushes in reminding us what’s worth protecting, and what to ignore

Chasing Tales

Chasing Tales

Remember “back in the day” when the term “white flight” was tossed around. Back when liberal types co opted inner cities to facilitate the government run social problems. We watched as neighborhoods were destroyed. Eventually resulting in no one being able to live in these places because they were destroyed by crime and neglect. Only to later be auctioned off and rebranded as an “uptown” with chic apartments and coffee shops ringing with sounds of acoustic guitars and bad poetry.

Later we watched the mall hopscotch occur. Upscale businesses consolidating in mega structures to create a theme park feel. You could take your child prodigy to a photo shoot where they could become the next super model, or teen idol. Christmas photos with Santa in the winter. Even a chain restaurant that served alcohol for day drinking parents or pre-drinkers warming up for the club.

Then the discount and video stores moved in. The courtyard started serving specials that anyone could afford. Soon kids with busy parents were hanging out, then the folks who enjoyed their themed mall needed somewhere else to shop local so the upscale stores moved to a new strip mall and boutiques came back into fashion. No more hanging out in the mall. Eventually they tear the mall down due to crime and neglect. Green spaces return to replace them.

Over the summer we watched the game take a step up. They didn’t take over a neighborhood, or a mall, they took a city. Seattle is lost. No one knows how they’ll get out of that mess. Surprisingly they doubled down and not only legalized drugs use, but they made the three things we know destroy communities conditions to use as a legal defense. Over 140, probably over 200 now, businesses have relocated or shut down in that city. Making Seattle a green space may be the only option at this point.

Now Georgia is the prize. Not a neighborhood or mall, not a city, but a state. Atlanta is our downfall. They’ve co opted Atlanta and it has continued to fall prey to the liberal notion that philanthropy is a valid approach to assistance and crime is an affluence problem. They’re fighting hard to gain power in and through Georgia. This is a fight that no one will win, because the opponent is interested in one thing, money. That’s better than folks seeking power over its citizens, but hardly noble.

The common man or woman sees this and feels powerless to stop it. It’s big, like “where do I start” big. Undoing years of attempts to destroy a way of life doesn’t happen over night.

Heres what I know. When my dog starts chasing it’s tale, first I laugh, the I tell it to stop. If that doesn’t work I smack it’s ass. If all of this doesn’t work I find a toy to distract it. This ain’t gonna be easy, and it doesn’t rest on the shoulder of Georgians. This is a notional disaster that has me understanding how brother fought against brother in the civil war.

Make no mistake. These folks want the country. I don’t know where we go to wait them out until they destroy our nation and move on so we can move back in with coffee shops and green spaces. Minus the bad music and poetry. I do know this pattern is 60 or 70 years realized and we’re screwed.

For now I’ll sit still while the nation chases its tale. Make no mistake though, my freedom trumps bloodlines. Listen carefully to those fools you follow for a dollar or a deal. Listen carefully when those dollars ain’t reaching your pockets and you find yourself turning in circles wondering what you chased. If you support folks who seek to control any aspects of my life, you maybe my brother, but you’re my enemy.

Equal Rights

Equal rights

Be you, do you, fuck them you don’t need approval. You don’t need a path, you blaze a trail and don’t drag the world with you. They gotta get theirs.

Don’t give me that history lesson as an excuse for your fear. Fuck you, you can’t be Mike’s mom back in the 60’s and 70’s with 4 boys and a dad who walked out. You can’t recreate a world with no daycare or relatives in a steel city gone soft. You can’t be forced to pack your belongings in a car full of noise and drive 700 miles off a cliff. Working like a dog taking vacations for a couple days at a beach in the woods with plastic table clothes and prayers to civilize your offspring. She had no shelter, no housing, no visibility in a city of families parading around during the day only to slink around at night. You ain’t got those kinda shoulders!

You don’t want equal rights if you’re looking for exceptions to who you are. It ain’t equal if you use your privilege, color, or family status to lift yourself above someone else. You can’t claim your ancestors pain as a check to support your fear of failure. You can’t ever be that person who labored under the sun their entire life finding little joys in a large field of oppression. Stop it, you won’t ever have that constitution. Let go of our heroes and quit strangling their legacy like the chains. You just want to keep them in your bonds for a come up.

Don’t confuse poverty with the working poor. We ain’t the same. You don’t know the shame of working till your bones hurt and your body goes on because your mind remembers that family at home that needs to eat. You don’t know about being raised by a father who sleeps at your house till it’s time to go back to a job that he can’t distinguish from prison just so you can have washing powder to clean your hand me downs. You ain’t got those stones.

Sittin around creating stories of pains like a young boy playing Superman. Pretending like a little girl playing dress up with a wire rim tiara made from aluminum foil. That check got you carving yourself up giving away pieces of your soul. You clog a system that could work with your thoughts of pain and fear you might have to go to work. Then roll around in public like some stunted zombie wrapped in bacon establishing your place in a system that resembles a dog chasing its tail.

But your fine now. I hear ya, You just smoke a little weed. It don’t hurt nobody, and it cures all those quasi psych medical problems in the PDR and the Diagnostic and statistical manual for Mental Illness. It’s all good, You ain’t hurtin no one. Until that bitch you buy weed from pissed of one of his other customers who’s graduated then someone lies dead in a yard littered with broke down vehicles and trash from association. Yeah, ain’t your fault, you were just gettin yours. Fuck you!

I see you posing up there in your jacked up truck pulling into your circled driveway with the manicured lawn. Gettin home so late you don’t know what that poseur bastard your raising from a distance has been doing. I see through that facade you’ve built to carry around. I smell them dollars your stacking wrinkled and wet from the pockets of folks with holes in their pants. You need that money.

You’ll need those dollars to keep that bastard out of court or put that heifer in rehab. They’ll come out and hide in church where their story won’t mention the collateral damage their lives has perpetrated. It’ll be a denominational re-entry into the next warped circle of life you created. Poor folks can’t afford the buyout of the dependence you came up off of, they just work it out and and see you for who you really are.

All these characters don’t want equality. They want a leg up on someone else for doing nothing. You gotta give it up to them folks who are stand up. They make no excuses for who they are and take what’s coming to them as a reminder life ain’t fair or easy. Living off ghosts or some symptomatic existence is just a hustle. You don’t want equality. You want what someone else worked for so you can sit back and stir shit up so no one sees your hustle. Fuck you.