(Un)Civilized
Poems
by Christopher Warren
“Uncivilized” by Christopher Warren · Non-copyright © 2023. No rights reserved.
To the extent possible under law, Christopher Warren has waived all copyright and related or neighboring rights to “Uncivilized,” including all poems. This publication may be reproduced in part or in full, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise—without prior written permission from the publisher.
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People come and go,
but you’re still looking for the truth.
Aren’t you?
1 - My Room
2 - Phone Call
3 - The Garden
4 - 9 to 5
5 - I Hope We All Get Some
Sleep
6 - TV
7 - Every Tree
8 - Art
9 - No Room in Hell
10 - Gingerbread House
11 - Come on In!
12 - Your Secrets
13 - Enough!
14 - Play Your Guitar
15 - Cancer
16 - All the Numbers Lied
Tonight
17 - Wooden Boy
18 - Team Meeting
19 - Death
20 - If I Had a Child
21 - The Cage
22 - Hunger
23 - Letter Found at a
Prison Suicide
24 - Bloody Heights
25 - Modern Journalism
26 - God at the Dinner
Table
27 - Shoot for the Stars
28 - The Bread Man
29 - Dead Rodent Haiku
30 - Teeth
31 - Death Sentence
32 - Bobo
33 - Sage and Smoke
34 - The Use of a Knife
35 - Teachers
36 - Burn it All
37 - Johnny
38 - The Crowd
39 - Daniel
40 - The Secret
41 - What Happened to You?
42 - In the Shower
43 - Fake World
44 - Company Man
45 - Involuntary
46 - Thoughtless
47 - Trial by Violence
48 - Sleeping House of Cards
This is my room
With the concrete floor
And the TV by the door.
There’s a blanket to sleep on,
And a cup of tea,
And lots of ennui.
Come on in.
You tell me your secret—
I’ll promise to keep it.
Hold your ear close
And I’ll tell you a few of mine;
I’ve got nothing but time.
Hello.
This is you from the future, calling.
I’m calling to tell you
Everything will be alright—
But only if you listen to me.
Your life is going to be a disaster.
You will lose everything
You thought was important.
Things that look promising
Will turn out to be dead-ends.
The world you believe in is fake.
Everything is worse
Than you thought it was.
Life as you know it
Will disintegrate and slide
Between your fingers.
You will become unrecognizable
To every-one and every-thing.
The people you call your friends
Are looking to murder you.
The people closest to you
Will turn on you.
You will be hated by everyone.
Humiliated.
Thrown out.
The pain will be unimaginable.
You will have days
Where the thought will enter your mind
That it isn’t worth living anymore.
Your being—
Body, mind, and soul,
Will be lost in moments
Of unimaginable agony
Beyond your wildest nightmares.
It will be like crawling through the desert—
Your guts hanging out of your chest—
Sand embedded beneath your eyelids
Scraping against your corneas with every blink.
You will think you have the answers,
And then realize you’re wrong again.
You will believe you have discovered what is right,
But you’ve only returned to somewhere worse
Than where you started.
Your sickness will be so vile,
And inside you will find yourself
In the wastelands of your imagination,
Where your soul will wander,
Crying out.
My words for you now,
Will never be enough to prepare you
For the pain.
You will fall.
It is mandatory.
But in your pain,
You will wander until you reach
The edge of darkness.
And you’ll fall off.
And before you have any chance
To come crashing down,
You’ll realize
That you’ve always been able
To fly—
Though everyone tried to tell you
Otherwise.
And you will fly,
And life will become something different
For you.
Almost no one will understand it.
They are living
The way you were,
And most of them
Will always live that way.
But those who do not hate you,
Will see you flying,
And a few will realize the great truth,
And they will take off with you,
All moving
To the same place.
And everything you’ve ever been afraid of
Will die.
And every nightmare you’ve ever had
Will be forgotten.
And every dream you’ve ever dreamed
Will be nothing compared to
The new nature
Of your life.
And one day,
You’ll pick up the phone,
And make a call.
And you will know these words in your heart,
And you will say it exactly like this.
Click.
Mom and Dad were in the garden.
They didn’t need a thing.
Every day they’d wander out into the woods.
Dad would slay the beast.
Mom would gather berries
And talk the bees
Out of their sweet honey.
By evening they’d have
A roaring fire,
And before bed,
Their bellies would be full.
And whenever it stormed
They’d be fast asleep,
Or dancing out in the rain.
And there wasn’t any snow
And the sun never scorched,
And they had everything they needed.
And every day was just the same,
But every day was new and precious.
Then one day, it all went wrong.
Mom said, “I’m not sure.”
“Sure about what?” said Dad.
“I’m not sure listening to you
Was a good idea.”
The thought was so crazy,
Dad thought she must’ve heard it
From a serpent.
Life continued as it always had,
But now instead of picking berries,
She made them clothes.
They didn’t want to see themselves
Anymore.
They gave birth to you.
Then they built roads,
Stacked up buildings.
They made lamps
So they wouldn’t need the sun anymore.
The sun got hot,
And the first snows came.
Now and then a storm
Would destroy everything.
Fields caught fire,
The beasts started eating each other,
The bees grew stingers,
And the food
Disappeared.
They got divorced,
And mom took you far away.
Dad’s still somewhere out there.
He eats grain and roots,
But he’s always hungry.
And Mom is never satisfied.
It isn’t a stretch to say
Everything’s been
Just about the same
Ever since.
At the burger joint
It’s closing time,
Escaping from my 9 to 5.
The smokes are cheap,
The burger’s dry—
It’s the only way
A man survives.
9 to 5, 9 to 5,
Always fighting for your life.
It’s what you need to stay alive.
Change careers at 35.
A decade and a half behind,
Before you know it, you’re 49—
Then 52, then 68.
Gets harder and harder working late.
72, then 73,
And life moves faster than the breeze.
Your eyes are dim, your neck is weak—
It’s getting harder just to speak.
82 and still you’re broke.
Your friends are dead, there ain’t much hope.
No time for children or a wife—
Been punching clocks your whole damn life.
Kidney’s failing, teeth are rotting—
Brain is rancid, memory spotty.
At 85, it ain’t much better,
Wheelchair work to pay the creditor.
Government doctors, longer hours,
Wonder if they’ll cut your power?
Medications piling up,
The money never is enough.
9 to 5, 9 to 5,
Work until the day you die.
Sit in a grave that you can’t afford,
And down in hell, you’re also poor.
You won’t get out
’Till you pay every penny.
But there’s no jobs in hell,
So good luck being debt-free.
9 to 5, 9 to 5,
A cause of death in city life.
But often it gets overlooked
And hidden in the history books.
A war to free the colored brave,
Now every color is a slave—
Fighting just to eat today,
Anxiety until the grave.
Sell your time and make a buck,
Think life is great when it really sucks.
They make you think you’re like a king
While dying slowly on your knees.
And before you know it, it’s too late—
The authorities have sealed your fate.
You have not lived life for your brother,
But lived life thinking you’ll have another.
And time’s all spent, you’re a bag of bones,
May God have mercy on your soul.
9 to 5, 9 to 5,
Some are broke, but some survive.
Debbie won the lottery—
An easy million, not tax-free.
Richard built a company,
He rakes six figures quarterly.
Johnny sets up water tanks—
Five hundred-thousand in the bank.
Thomas made a fine invention,
Never fears a life on pension.
Some work hard, and people praise ’em,
Others jailed for tax-evasion.
Poor in money, rich in time,
Dropping dollars, grabbing dimes.
And poor in time, but rich in money,
At the cost of freedom—life’s so funny.
Some are happy being broke,
Some are dying for a smoke—
And half a burger at the joint.
With prices rising, what’s the point?
And gas is rising by the day,
Will you take the cost, will it ever pay?
Money made from politics,
The 4th world war of stones and sticks.
It pays to be a politician,
Less to be an electrician.
Big suits working 9 to 5
Seldom know how to get by.
Standing on an ivory tower—
Egos always craving power.
9 to 5, 9 to 5,
Make a few bucks on the side.
Hide it from those prying eyes,
And build yourself a brand new life.
Jobs don’t make you self-sufficient.
Time to learn to be proficient.
Building, welding, life solutions,
Help your neighbor’s life improve.
And charge a dollar for your work,
You’ll know yourself how much it’s worth.
And when your coffee costs a grand,
By then you’ll live right off the land—
And raise some creatures, grow some food,
There isn’t much more to improve.
May God above give you some rest,
And live your life out to its best.
I hope we all get some sleep
With the bombs going off.
We’ll pull up the sheets
And slip into slumber—
Tumbling down dreams of clouds—
Loud mouths silencing to horns
Of Peter and Gabriel filling the air.
And god I hope we can sleep—
Amidst the panicked thunder,
It’s no wonder we’ve stayed so awake
In our dread of tomorrow,
And borrowing time beyond debt.
With aching legs that scream for mercy
We’ll rest ourselves like rotting logs
Crumbling in an autumn that covers
The days like bed sheets.
But more than any will or way,
Beyond the world and it’s folly
We’ll take a trolley home
And I hope we all get some sleep.
I’m willing to bet
That half these women on TV are liars.
When no one’s around to see,
And the cameras are off,
The crew takes to the streets to see who they can find.
They get themselves a fine looking specimen—
Chiseled jaw and slicked back hair.
They put him in a cozy room
With pills to give him fatter hips.
His hair falls out, they shine his teeth.
A new wig and make up
For a different look each week.
Then, what’s left of that person
Smiles for the camera,
And tells you what’s really happening in the world.
Every tree has its roots.
You can’t always see them,
But you know they’re there.
Not every tree is beautiful,
But some of the ones that are
Have very ugly, knotted roots.
The children sit on them,
And enjoy the quiet
And the shade.
One day my mother
Took me in to get a haircut.
I hadn’t been going to school,
Because school was making me sick.
I didn’t realize before it was too late,
But my mother had told everything
To this hairdresser.
She was old, and slow, and wouldn’t shut up.
She’d spend an hour on one client,
And I don’t know how she did it.
I can’t imagine I really wanted a haircut anyway.
She didn’t even do a good job.
I think the only reason
My mother even patronized her business
Was social pressure.
I sat in the chair, and for the next hour,
This old woman grilled me.
I don’t even remember what she said.
It was like a stranger
Sorting through your underwear drawer.
My mother watched from the sidelines
And said nothing.
The interrogation continued
And I started to cry.
I’d never been told
How to say no.
Saying no came many years later.
It was like getting raped
With your parent’s permission.
In many ways, I was raped.
It was impolite to tell people
To stop raping you,
So I never resisted.
I felt like I was always wrong.
The old woman didn’t understand
The words I used.
She didn’t have the same
Vocabulary.
She had no business
Knowing what she knew.
All she did was prove
That I couldn’t trust anyone.
She held the mirror up to my hair
When she was done.
“How does it look?” she said.
“Good,” I said.
But I didn’t recognize myself.
She’d cut my hair
In a way that made me look
Like a bully.
To survive being surrounded by liars,
I became a liar.
To survive always being watched,
I hid myself.
Everything my mother found,
She’d use against me.
Everything my mother found
Would be twisted and distorted
And whispered to the whole family.
It was like strangers
Sifting through someone else’s underwear drawer
That they thought was yours.
It was like people deciding exactly who you were
And sentencing you to their own hellish idea of your future
Without knowing you.
This is a wicked forest
We’re all in.
Wicked trees growing
From sick, worm-eaten roots.
The nights are long,
And the beasts roam between the trees,
Devouring whoever they may find.
I don’t know how many of us will be left,
But I know the woodsman is coming.
Every tree will have its time to be cut down.
And any tree that is sick,
Weak,
Rotten,
Will be thrown into the fire.
So grow up towards the heavens.
Don’t look down as you reach out with your arms.
Where you came from
Is not important.
Grow without looking to see
How tall the trees around you are.
Grow without a thought
Toward time, or place,
Or who or what.
You’re not the one
Who planted the seed.
You’re not the one
Who put you where you are.
A tree that is wise,
Knows it has no reason to run.
A wise tree knows
That running is not its nature.
A tree knows
That it cannot stop the fire.
The wise tree waits,
No matter what may come,
And watches,
And doesn’t think about it.
Most people hate art.
They say they love it,
But if they ever see art face to face,
It makes them squirm.
Art isn’t the smeared
Rainbow crap
In every stairwell.
Art cannot be measured
Because it burns every
Measuring stick that nears it.
It’s one thing
To paint a pretty picture.
Painting pictures is a trade and a skill.
Painting pictures is like building a house.
It’s one thing to paint a picture,
Or paint a house,
But it’s another thing to paint art.
If you need a place to lay
Your head at night,
Art is useless for that purpose,
But a house is what’s practical.
Can openers are practical.
Shoes and raincoats
And pen and paper
Are practical items.
They are not art themselves,
But they can be used
For artistic purposes.
The crap people call art
Is useless compared
To these practical things.
Real art, the stuff that
Can’t be faked, phoned in,
Packaged and processed,
Has a life that is longer
Than anything
In this physical world.
People say you can’t have art and money.
This is a blatant lie—
Though it is true,
That you can lose art in pursuit of money.
After all, you can lose everything
In pursuit of money.
Art can live without money—
Art can live despite money.
Art lives no matter how much or how little
It has.
Art is dangerous.
Art is war.
Art makes your skin crawl.
Art is wondrous and terrifying.
Art can build the world,
And art can destroy the world.
Art will make you
Unrecognizable to your
Fellow man.
But the bottom line
Is that art is dangerous.
A delicate balance of style and substance,
You can kill the idea by doubting it.
No one can make the art but you.
Or rather, you do not make the art,
But the art is made through you.
And you
Can either tell the truth, or tell lies.
When art is made from lies,
It’s called propaganda.
When art is made from truth,
It’s known as the truth,
And the truth lives forever.
You can tell the truth with lies—
That’s what every fairy tale is.
And every fairy tale,
The ones we all remember,
Have lessons.
A fairy tale that has no truth,
Has no worth.
It is eternally poisonous.
One is only worthy to be called an artist
If one has lived.
To make great art, one must live a great life.
There is nothing special about an artist.
They are not worthy of any pedestal.
Artists are not smart.
Artists are not special.
Artists have only one job:
To record every deadly thing they see in the world.
An artist documents things that are deadly,
So that you might die
To a way of life that was merely an illusion.
Art bends the fabric of false reality
To reveal what has been hiding
In plain sight.
An artist shows you the beauty
Of the simple truth
Without wiping off the mud—
Without sterilizing,
Without modifying,
Without pretension,
What is to be seen by all.
An artist only needs one finger
To point to what’s already there.
Most people disguised as artists kill the soul,
But a true artist has mercy.
Art is not emotion.
Art is not empathy.
Art created with emotion is lies.
Art is not activism—
In 50 years, you will be forgotten.
Art is not made by extortion.
Art is not made by protecting ideas,
Art is made by exposing ideas—
Money or no money.
Sunshine or rain.
Persecution or peace.
Art is made when nothing else can be made.
Art is the departure from lies
That are all the same.
Art isn’t trying to be unique.
Art isn’t trying to be clever.
Art isn’t trying to be remembered.
Art isn’t pain,
Art isn’t joy,
Art isn’t fear.
Art is what you find
When you strip all these things away.
The field of journalism
Should be run by artists,
But it’s mostly run by cowards.
Every product should be art—
But most products aren’t real.
Governments should be run by artists,
But the first rule of government is lies.
The stuff they call art today
Is a cancer to the soul.
But art should nourish the sick,
And it should stun the healthy.
Everyone has it in them to be an artist,
But most live with lies.
The people who call themselves artists
Are unworthy of their title.
Art is not created out of schooling.
Art in its purest form destroys schools.
Unrestrained art destroys nations
And brings the dead back to life.
The fake artists try to kill
The real ones.
The real artists can’t help but live.
The eye can’t help but see,
The ear can’t help but hear,
And the soul can’t help but know—
Once it is free of the lies.
And you, observing the art,
May not have words to describe it
Or explain it,
But you know in your heart
That it is true,
And it will always be true.
There’s no room in hell.
The wind howls over cracked brick and melting asphalt.
No room for the dead.
They line the streets looking for a bite to eat—
A hot dog with relish, a butterscotch sundae.
I could go for something like that.
But there’s no room in hell.
The ambulance wheels another one of them off.
I watch from my apartment window.
I can’t see much through the dirty glass, just dark shapes,
And I see faces in the dirt.
My father looks a lot like me.
Sometimes people think I look younger than before,
And people tell him he looks older—
But who am I kidding? They don’t really tell him that.
In hell, everyone’s nice.
I can smell their ice cream, their boxes of chocolate.
I smell the burgers fizzling in a pool of rancid industrial waste.
They eat it all up.
Feels good.
Up in my room I’m alone
Sampling the all-your-eyes-can-eat buffet.
But there isn’t much flavor,
Just the smell of my own sweat and urine.
I pretend it’s not my own,
But that car’s running out of mileage.
An old black crow sits atop the roof
Knocking bricks down the chimney.
He doesn’t give a damn about it all.
I’m happy for him.
He doesn’t give a damn about all the food
That lines these city streets.
He takes what he pleases where he can get it—
Swooping down while some invalid isn’t watching,
Or pecking scraps up from the road.
Like my dad used to say—
When the sausages fell in the dirt—
“More seasoning!”
He’s in the other room downstairs.
Maybe he’s sleeping,
Or if he’s dead,
How would I know?
Right about this time, my body insists
On a cup of coffee.
It already knows all the movements,
Rehearsed day after day
To an audience of none—
Other than the flies on the wall,
The bugs in the sink.
But coffee makes me want to wretch,
And I’m so hungry,
I’d rather tear my guts out than eat anything.
There’s no more room for me.
No room in hell.
I’m taking up all the space,
And there’s nowhere for me to go.
Nowhere for anyone to go.
But they keep on eating,
And they keep on drinking,
And running their mouths about things
That they’ll forget in a week.
And maybe that’s giving too much credit.
I sold all the credit I had.
Now everyone else is getting their slice.
It’s too hot to think,
Too sticky to sleep.
The mattress sags with ten years of sweat,
Cushioned by mold and no stranger to moss.
There’s no room for me there either.
The voices are so meaningless—
So vain and vain and vain,
It’s a language that only speaks one word—
A word that isn’t worth a penny.
It’s the only word I was ever taught.
But there’s no room in hell.
That’s why they’re all here.
That’s why they disappear when the food runs out,
And I’m still here,
Awake.
Alone.
Maybe it’s time to move—
Somewhere where there’s air to breathe.
I don’t care if there’s ice cream,
Or a bed,
Or mom and dad
Or fancy cars
Or all my eyes can eat.
All I need is room to breathe.
A place to be.
A place no hellish mind can see.
If Hell’s so full,
I guess Heaven’s the only place
To go.
The scariest people you will ever meet have smiles on their
faces
As they welcome you into their gingerbread house.
They won’t ask for a thing as they make you dinner—
Such long nights in the woods you’ve spent.
The scariest people will give you a bed to sleep in,
And one dawn you’ll realize
That you’ve been locked in a cage.
But you’ll eat better than you ever have.
Or if you’re not one to only accept favors,
Perhaps you’ll work your fingers ’till the flesh falls off
And make the house better than it ever was.
Either way you’ll be one to pity;
I was once naive.
People in gingerbread houses don’t want what’s better.
They may laugh at your jokes,
Indulge in your stories,
But their eyes will gleam like a crocodile—
Because believe me, they’ve been out in those woods
Even longer than you have.
And you’d never guess
Just how hungry they are.
You can tell because they do what they must
To get what they want,
And they’ll never take those eyes off you.
Those starving,
Innocent eyes.
Come on in!
Hell is nice and warm.
We’ve got bread
And a three-ring circus!
Watch your neighbors
Get skinned alive
And cute little puppies
Rush from behind the curtain
To lap up all the blood!
Come on in!
Have yourself a drink
At the finest bar
You’ve ever seen!
Help yourself to some pretty women.
This one slits her wrists each night!
This one wants your credit cards!
This one won’t let you sleep!
This one’s looking for someone
To feed her five children.
Come on in!
You look like a charitable man!
We’ve got a talking
TV parakeet pastor.
He’ll tell you
Everything you want to hear.
We’ve got cars, cigars,
And chocolate bars.
All the dope you could ever smoke
And a whole lot
Of illegal stuff—
All in the name
Of FUN!
So come on in!
Watch the girl Sodom
As she disembowels Gomorrah.
Stay up past your bedtime
And see our midnight act!
Find out if 75 years
Is old enough to be aborted.
Hear the singing
Slit-throat man
As he whistles
Through withered
Windpipes.
Bring your girl down
To the Gossip cafe
Where everyone knows everything
About each other—
Make up something juicy
About everyone you hate!
You won’t want to miss the brawls
And broken windows.
Every Thursday it’s
Patrons versus staff night.
Friday is a war between all religions,
And Saturday is Whites vs. Blacks!
And while you’re out here,
Get your teeth pulled!
The circus isn’t just for entertainment!
Visit with our tax specialists.
Push papers and pump iron.
What have you been putting off?
What are you waiting for?!
Come on in!
Don’t tell me you’ve got
Something better to do!
Come on in!
This is all there is to life,
And you don’t want
To miss it!
When you blow out your brains,
They’ll be sure to cover up the holes with daffodils.
They’ll wipe away your blood
With lemon water and mint.
The stitches are of the utmost importance,
Because they hold your mouth shut.
With a suit over your scars, and some nails on a box,
They’ll cover your story with six feet of dirt.
After that,
There’s no way for them to see
Just how ugly you were.
Another email.
Another letter.
When will these idiots realize
I’m never going to buy their shit.
I don’t care that it’s half-off.
I don’t even care if it’s free.
I wouldn’t even gift that shit
To my worst enemies.
I wouldn’t even think about it,
But they just don’t stop.
Somewhere out there,
A landfill is piled up into the clouds
With billboards, unredeemed offers,
Products that have come and gone,
Newspaper clippings, coupons, as-seen-on-TV,
Buy-one-get-one-if-you-tell-a-friend-and-become-a-member.
You could pave the road to hell with all that shit.
Probably already is.
How many millions of executives
Have there been,
And nobody ever stopped and asked
If any of this shit matters?
How many people paused to reflect,
To wonder what the widget
Would do for people
In 100 years?
In any of the thousand years before us,
Has anyone had the same idea?
The ones that asked
Were probably fired.
“TODAY,” they say.
“I WANT IT NOW.
”CONSUMABLE PRODUCT!”
So they come up with the shit.
They figure out a way to package the shit.
They run the numbers and talk to the shit factories
To see if they can make the shit.
They look for people to buy the shit.
They look at everything you do,
And listen in on your conversations,
And turn over the same rocks,
And follow you into the bathroom
To determine if you’re today’s lucky shit winner.
And you see the pretty picture,
And you think it’ll make you feel better
Because they told you it’ll make you feel better.
And you give ’em your money
And they mail you the shit.
Then in five minutes you forget about the shit
Because someone else is lined up
To sell you some different shit.
Shit to buy, shit to be afraid of,
Shit you’ve had a million times before
With a cute little picture
To make it feel special.
This book was probably written
A few hundred years ago,
But that was yesterday’s shit.
And here I am writing it.
And here you are reading it.
And in a week the flies at the ad agencies
Have already found new shit to land on.
And 100 years from now, they’ll be making the same shit.
And they’ll call it innovation
And genius
And science
And cutting edge
And award-worthy
And once-in-a-lifetime.
And they’ll leave the rest of us
Grinding our teeth
As we fail to lay comfortably
In our graves.
There’s a man with a guitar and a nice shirt,
But not for long.
The bus is on its way.
A few blocks down the street
There was another young man with a guitar—
A little bit older than me,
But another nice shirt.
We played a song and laughed over small things.
He wrote a song about his ex-girlfriend—
Could’ve played it to millions on the radio—
But I’m the only one who knows it.
The streets of San Antonio are empty these days,
But now and then someone walks by.
And now and then, there’s someone with a guitar,
And a little bit of something left that’s dying.
I’m at the bus stop, and here’s another stranger.
People take pictures of me with my guitar.
I get smiles and nice words,
And none of it pays my bills.
Here’s this young man with a nice shirt.
He plucks the same notes the world has plucked for 40 years,
And shows me his teeth.
“Make anything today?” he says.
“Only $10,” but it’s better than nothing, I think.
At least I can eat before the landlord boots us.
His smile disappears.
He picks idly with an empty gaze.
“How about you?” I ask.
He looks up,
“Nothing, really.”
People walk by. Stares and smiles.
He keeps playing.
Before long the bus is pulling up,
And before we head home,
He tells me he’s getting evicted this week.
I say nothing.
The ride is another sleepy hour,
And as I step off the bus,
I see him sitting alone,
Waiting for his stop.
I would’ve said something,
But all I can do
Is play my guitar
While somewhere far from me,
He plays his.
When the dictator
Beats down for too long—
When the king
Rends his subjects to shreds
For mere amusement—
When the leader
Drags his men
Through endless war—
When the people starve
And see death watching
Around every corner—
And are lost again
When they think
They can’t be any more lost
Than they have been—
When the child is beaten
With a razor strop—
When you do the will
Of the one you hate—
When you realize
You can’t please the king—
The man realizes
It’s every man
For himself.
And the idea metastasizes
From one person to another,
Until the whole kingdom
Is stained with blood,
And the body dies.
I counted nine steps up to the attic.
Four twists of the key.
I counted the seven circles I paced around the room
So I could sit down once.
I blinked my eyes twice so I wouldn’t die,
Then twice for a brighter future.
Twenty-seven blinks and shakes it took
Until I could look out the window.
And for a moment I could forget it all,
Seeing the green of trees, peaks of houses.
For a moment, I could forget
There was more to be done.
Then I had to tap twice,
And blink a thousand times.
Just so, for a second,
I could feel I’d be alright.
Then I walked down the smoky streets.
I made sure to step over every crack
With the left foot.
I knew if I stepped over with my right,
Then my girlfriend would die
On her hiking trip tomorrow.
Three times I pressed the button,
And blinked 20 times to cross the street.
I could barely see the cracks,
But I knew where they were,
And I stepped over most of them.
My foot slipped,
And the tip of my shoe came down
In the wrong place.
My father’s going to get murdered tomorrow.
Someone’s going to quietly pick the lock
And slip inside.
My father’s going to be asleep,
And someone’s going to walk down the hall
And open his door,
And walk up to him
Sleeping in bed.
He’s going to listen to him awhile
Like that.
He’s going to put a long slick razor
To his neck—
And I had to run
Because a car barreled
From around the corner.
The number of steps from
The corner to the quickie store
Is 27,
And 27 is a very
Evil number.
So before I reached the door,
I took a turn and walked in a circle
To make the number 30.
30 is not a good number,
But it’s not as bad as 27.
Maybe, if I blink 20 times,
I won’t have a heart-attack tonight,
I thought.
I walked in,
Keeping my feet on the
White checkered tiles.
With each step,
I tapped twice on my hip—
Hiding it—
So the clerk wouldn’t think
I was too strange.
I walked to the back
And found the tickets.
Today’s the 18th, I thought—
So two more nights
Until the next lucky night.
I filled out the sheet,
And this time,
I managed to avoid smearing
The pencil
Outside the lines.
My number tonight
Is 528.
God, or the universe
Must love me.
I made a $10 bet last night.
If my number wins,
I’ll be able to eat on Thursday,
And Friday, and Saturday,
And for the next few months.
And maybe for a little while,
I can forget about the numbers.
I’ll forget to tap, and blink, and walk my walk,
And my girlfriend won’t smear her brains on the rocks,
And Dad won’t get his throat cut,
And I’ll be free,
And life will be different.
The clerk handed me the ticket.
I almost forgot to take it with my right hand.
I walked a circle outside,
And 28 steps to the corner.
And I walked back.
By that point,
I’d taken 950 steps.
1000 is the lucky number,
So in the attic, I followed the grooves
My feet have worn in a circle
On the floor.
I counted 150 steps.
And tapped twice,
And blinked 1000 times
So I don’t die in my sleep.
Tomorrow morning I will wake up
And I’ll find out
If I’m a winner.
Your whole life
You’ve been a little wooden boy.
Your parents kept you hanging
On a string
So you wouldn’t leave.
They taught you how to live
A little wooden life
Just like everyone else.
They taught you to put on a show.
They traumatized you so well,
That you know how to dance for them—
Even after they’re dead.
And when you make a mistake,
You can’t sleep.
And you’ll keep dancing
So other people smile at you.
You’ll keep dancing
So you won’t see yourself.
But when you get home,
Tired, and
Beat up, and
Worn out, and
Tore through,
You have to pass the mirror
To get to the shower.
Will you open your eyes tonight?
Or will you sit in the tub,
Drinking—
Tipsy from the intoxication
Of your mind
That lets you disappear.
You know if you cut the strings,
The audience will boo.
They’ll throw rotting vegetables
For you to eat
The rest of the days of your
Sad wooden life.
But if you cut the strings,
You’ll live.
You’ve never been a wooden boy.
You were never meant to hang on strings.
So why are you
Holding on to them
So tightly?
It happens once a week.
We get together and wag our chins,
Drink from our expensive and expansive
Collection of cheap wines,
And fiddle with our coat pockets.
Usually the first hour is competitive avoidance—
Nobody wants to be that guy,
But sometimes you have to be.
“Bob?” I say.
The room goes silent.
Old Mr. Foster nearly drops his fork.
“The new guy,” I say. “We all know him.”
Robbie knows this schtick,
And fails to suppress a face-splitting grin.
I grab a steak knife and begin wiping it off with a napkin.
“What’s it been now? Three weeks?”
Nobody knows for certain,
But they like my theatrics.
“Well, I can tell you something…
”No matter how long it’s been,
“I say, it’s too long!”
Willie finally speaks up,
“He’s being going to mass every damn week.
”Pays his bills.
“Heck, I even saw him put out his recycling at two–o–clock.
”Who the hell does he think he is?
“And gentlemen,” I say,
“This week, I offered him my sandwich,
”And when he lost his keys the other day,
“Found them in ten minutes!”
Mr. Foster bears his teeth,
“And I watched his stupid dog
”While he was with his wife at the hospital—
“Giving birth, of all things!”
After he’s spoken,
It’s gloves–off for the night.
We sit around for the next two hours
And recount all the ways
We pretend to like this asshole.
Then tomorrow we embrace the new day.
My wife bakes him a cake.
I know she’s going to have a lot
To say about that.
Secretly though,
Despite all the trouble,
I think we all look forward to
Next week’s team meeting.
Today I opened all the death papers
And read about death until all the red-pen monkeys keeled.
Then I turned on the death box
And watched the world crumble in the sunset,
And listened to the screams of the damned as they met their fate.
I laughed at all the death reporters with their splotchy red ties
And darkening sockets filling up with night.
I laughed as I watched them all die.
With smoke and dust lingering at my windowsills,
I went to brush my teeth,
And to watch my own face with fatigue.
One day, I’ll have a death-grin carved of bone—
A face that will last an eternity.
That’s what the voices on the death speaker say
As I lay down on my death bed.
And as the world rumbles,
And all the clocks stop,
And every child walks off a cliff,
And every dream disappears
Into an all-consuming light,
I marvel.
What a time it is,
To be alive.
If I had a child,
They wouldn’t have a screen to stare at—
No colored logos filling every corner.
No tailored ads or search results,
No messages, mail, or multi-chat,
No games or keyboards or controllers.
If I had a child,
They would see the color of the sky.
They would see stars—
No moments lost to the feed that feeds on you.
No sycophants and the so-called enlightened.
No world where everyone says they’re right.
No world programmed by invisible prison makers;
Why only eight circles of hell, when everyone can have their own?
But if I had a child,
He wouldn’t be alone
Like all the other kids who sit in their rooms
While Mom microwaves dinner,
And dad scrolls through the hungry feed—
If he’s even around at all.
My child wouldn’t be alone.
My child would see a different world—
A world where there’s no such thing as school,
And no reason to run from anything.
A world that can be defeated,
No matter how dangerous
It may be.
A world where hope
Is all there is.
A world where strength
Is the only thing
To stand on.
The only thing to feed on
Comes from the wide green pastures,
And the woods where
The beasts are found sleeping.
Everything else
Can destroy itself
If it pleases.
All that will remain
Is a quietness
That hasn’t been heard
In thousands of years.
My dad kept me locked up in the attic,
But when the neighbors came by,
I was too clever for him.
He’d catch me listening at the stairs
And chase me up, saying
“You looking for your last breath, boy?!”
He kept me where I belonged—
My own little corner of hell.
In hell the silence is so loud,
And the only thing to look at
Is the window you want to jump out.
Every day, you’re waiting.
You can’t see the clock ticking down,
But you know it’s there.
When you’re a kid, you can forget
To stand in line.
The adults have to whip you
Until they don’t have to anymore.
When you’re young,
Freedom is who you are.
But it’s not allowed
When anyone’s around.
And I’d stay up there
In the attic,
Until the next time,
He’d catch me
Being myself
Again.
I’m watching the whole world eat itself.
It hasn’t died yet,
But I’m not hungry.
I’m watching the whole world lie
And beat itself up.
I don’t know what it thinks
It’s going to get from all this.
I’m watching the fat pig
Eat his slop.
It’s all he knows.
I’m watching all sense of purpose die.
I’m seeing life being lived for no reason—
Living for the sake of living.
Eating for the sake of eating—
Waiting to die and enjoying every bite.
One day, you’ll go back to nothing.
And if you’ve forgotten
That you are nothing,
The nightmare that lies In wait for you,
Is ready to taste
Your infinite distress.
But those who know they’re nothing,
Live.
The beast cannot dine on nothing,
So it will starve.
Take away the food.
I can go hungry.
I have everything I need.
Take away the whole world
And give me a dark room
With nobody and no thing.
I have everything I need.
Call me anything and everything you want.
Throw every stick and stone and word
And see what happens.
I’ll still be sitting here.
I have everything I need.
You eat everything, and are unsatisfied.
I eat nothing, and I’m full.
And if you could admit to being wrong,
You could live like me.
And you’d never need
To eat again.
When I was 16,
I went upstairs to the loft.
I’d never seen the gun before,
But I had heard it was there.
The loft was piled high with boxes.
The cardboard was damp from the leaky roof
And last night’s rain.
I found photo albums,
Pictures of people who looked like me—
Or my father,
Or my mother—
But I didn’t understand them
Any more than that.
I found crates of old records,
Clothes with rat droppings, and dead moths.
I found mold and all kinds
Of things that might’ve been
Recognizable fifty years ago.
At first I thought
It was an instrument case.
It was like the ones the kids
In band brought to school.
It was black and scratched up—
Almost half as long as me.
And it was unlocked.
That’s when I knew
I wouldn’t have to keep this secret
Forever.
Two weeks later
It was the last day of school,
But no one knew it
Except for me.
I waited, and I watched.
Suddenly, class wasn’t so boring.
For all they knew,
It was like any other day,
But everyone looked afraid of me.
Their eyes held on me too long.
Their voices quivered when they spoke.
The air was slimy.
During lunch, I walked off to the park
Where I’d hidden my tool of escape.
I knew that when I’d return,
And wait for all the other kids
To shuffle into their seats,
I would finally be free.
They’d put my face everywhere.
I’d become a household name.
Everyone would be afraid of me,
Long after I’m dead.
And best of all—
They’d change the laws,
They’d fight in the street.
They’d champion me as a villain
And make me a hero to their cause.
They’d blame everything in the world
Except for me.
They’d blame everything
Except for the sickness
That builds out—
Growing new blood vessels
And spreading
While no one watches—
A sickness that eats and eats
Until there’s nothing left
To eat anymore.
I may be sick,
But now I’m free.
“Tis I who’s tallest!” said Grimes,
Hair swaying in the draft-less room.
“Indeed,” I admitted,
“Though you missed one fatal flaw.”
“Flaw?” said Grimes,
“What fatal flaw?
”Do my shoes not make me 6’9”?”
“They do,” I said,
“But I carry the sword,”
And I lopped off his head.
THE WORLD
IS BETTER
THAN IT HAS EVER BEEN.
WELL-BEING IS
AT AN ALL-TIME
LOW.
PEOPLE ARE LIVING
LONGER THAN
THEY EVER HAVE.
SUICIDE IS AT
AN ALL-TIME
HIGH.
PEOPLE ARE UNHAPPY
BECAUSE THEY DON’T HAVE ENOUGH PILLS
TO MAKE THEM HAPPY.
PEOPLE ARE STUPID
BECAUSE THEY DON’T DO
WHAT THE SMART PEOPLE
TELL THEM TO.
PEOPLE KILL EACH OTHER
BECAUSE THEY HAVE THE TOOLS
TO KILL EACH OTHER
WHAT YOU THOUGHT
WAS BAD FOR YOU
IS REALLY GOOD FOR YOU
WHAT YOU THOUGHT
WAS GOOD FOR YOU
IS ABOUT TO KILL YOU
WALK FOR YOUR LIVES.
THE WORLD HAS ENDED,
BUT NOBODY HAS NOTICED IT YET.
EVERY PROBLEM YOU HAVE
IS SOMEONE ELSE’S FAULT,
AND THEY PROBABLY HAVE
MORE MONEY THAN YOU.
COME AGAIN
AND WE’LL TELL YOU MORE
TOMORROW
The lights are low, the night is young,
And all I know is the hunger within these early hours.
A glass of water in my right hand,
I sit at the table
Marveling the stainless steel pot—
Clean from last night.
The sink has run dry for a little while now,
But the bathtub roars with life,
So I fill the pot with water, and marvel at the time.
Sitting in my chair again,
I slice through an onion—
Laughing at the times I lost the knife
And used a spoon instead.
The room is icy in the corner where I sit and work.
The air is stale, sometimes cloying.
I open up the window just a crack sometimes,
But this morning I leave it shut
In anticipation of the warmth of the boiling water.
The slices of onion float in the pot,
Waiting patiently on the range for the crescendo of a boil.
While they sit, I slice a chuck roast into pieces
No smaller than the tip of my thumb.
I used to lose my mind this way,
Sitting in silence, letting the mind wander.
“What an imagination!” I was told as a child,
But no one told me what I already knew—
That the imagination is a curse.
Imagination puts people on the end of a rope—
At the end of a morgue
Where they poke and prod you with sharp metal objects,
Trying to figure out
Just what happened to you.
Imagination
Puts you at the bottom of a pill bottle,
Because the future you imagine
Is so vivid and all-consuming.
Imagination makes your heart stop,
Your soul ache with torment,
Every part of your being
Longing for an escape.
Imagination is a drug
That fails to cure
The disease it has created.
“What an imagination you have!”
I wonder how many survivors
Are out there,
Other than me.
How to create an artistic mind:
Take a normal child
And break him over your knee
With the pain of everything
In this world that is
Undeserved
And unnecessary.
Cut off his legs with neglect
And leave him broken without answers.
The pain and unresolved nature of his life’s story
Will spark a wondrous fire in the mind
That glows bright,
But will eventually
Outburn any
Wildfire.
That fire becomes the child’s existence.
He paints to understand the pain.
He watches the world with nothing to say,
But when all the answers
To the same questions
Do not satisfy,
He pleads for something bolder.
Now you have a child with a weak body,
And a mind
That could burn
New York City to the ground.
A sign on the side of the road states calmly:
“Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death
For children ages 15-17.”
The author of the sign?
A therapy center—
No doubt run by survivors
Of the same mind-searing upbringing.
And many believe the mind
Can be sharpened into a sword,
Or a pen,
Or a needle to stitch up the lost and wounded.
A Swiss army intellect.
But no such thing exists from man alone.
Because as well as you can imagine solutions,
You can twice as easily imagine new problems—
Especially in the early hours.
Especially when the body is restless.
“What an imagination.”
What a thing indeed.
All the same,
As God gave Paul a thorn of torment,
God allows the world to light my mind on fire,
So that when the smoke dies down,
I may see him and understand.
So I may understand the joy of silence.
And already, the beef is done—
Cut and bloody on the board.
In the pieces fall,
Splashing as they meet the onions.
The steam warms the room,
And I lean back in the chair—
Knowing the stillness of the room
And the little bubbling of the pot.
I used to not enjoy this.
I would feel the sting
And the pain would
Wrap its fingers
Around my heart.
No more, in the quiet.
Now I simply am.
The thoughts come,
And the voices tempt,
But by God’s will they lay bound with chains—
Each one captive.
Nothing aches from the past.
The soul does not wretch anticipating the future.
All pain is endured.
The truth does not waver.
Lies do not last,
And wickedness
Is cut down
Like the wheat in the field.
And I pray for those who do not comprehend—
That their wounds make them cry out,
And that they know they are heard,
And that their minds are forged of God into swords against evil,
That dispassionately endure the moment—
The quiet—
While the wicked spirit
Dies screaming
In its own fire.
And I sit alone,
With no one except God and I at the dinner table.
He does not need my words.
He is the truth inside.
He is in the stillness and speaks through revelation.
In the stillness I am not alone.
In the silence while I eat the food,
He knows the gratitude I have—
Of a bird who eats the food God delivers to him—
Never knowing where the next feast will be,
But living in peace.
And as the warmth leaks out
Through the cracks in the window,
I look out to see the blue glow
Of an approaching sunrise.
And though beyond my room is chaos,
The clouds inside me are still.
I sit, shielded from within
Against all that dares to destroy peace.
And inside my heart I give thanks,
Not as words, or as a routine
To please a tyrant that I fear,
But as someone who knew the pain,
And knows how merciful His mercy is.
And I pray for the survivors
And the clueless,
And for their guidance in every moment
As I need guidance,
And pray for light in the world,
Like the light that glows
While I sit with God at the dinner table.
Knowing without sight.
Sight within stillness.
Calm within chaos.
The most comfortable place to be
Is the place where you don’t give a fuck.
The world tries to make you angry—
To force you to make up your mind
On a revolving door of orchestrated drivel.
All you have to do is close your eyes.
When will the participants realize
They don’t have to play the game?
How much pain before they’re
Willing to consider
Crossing out the rules?
The pen has always sat on your table.
It has always been in your stationary collection,
But all your coworkers insist that something’s coming.
Don’t pick up that pen.
Don’t change the rules.
You’ll miss out on all the fun.
But we all know
They can’t admit
To their fear.
They’re too afraid
To change the rules of the game
Because now they depend on
What they hate.
Their mistake
Is giving a fuck.
And because they give a fuck,
You give a fuck.
So who the fuck
Is winning in all this?
How many corpses lay buried
Beneath the surface of the moon?
They thought they were moving
Forward, grinding their way along the cutting edge—
But it never stopped them from dying.
“Shoot for the stars,”
But if you look out from under your rock,
See the sky a burnt black,
The stars are nothing but ambition.
The stars are places for people to get burned up—
Where dreams die and reality lives.
You spend so much time looking for a way forward,
A way out of the trap,
That you never think to look out the window.
And then you have the audacity to feel sorry for yourself—
Giving a fuck about how you shouldn’t have given a fuck.
But before you’re able to complete the circle
Of chasing your own tail,
The whole world fills with light.
And before you forget what light is,
Or the nothing beyond, that’s neither light nor dark,
You realize you’ve gotten your reward.
But you’ve already forgotten it.
He lay on the table, round and thick.
His skin: warm and crispy like crust.
His innards are doughy, and soft, and slick—
Which offers the purest disgust.
But they brush him with butter, and into the cutter
He slides like a gourmet delight.
Fresh milk from the udder, they pour in a glass,
And they feast as the royalty might.
No screams, no cries as they pull out his eyes,
No words as they rip out his tongue.
It’s the mistress who knows as they slice off his toes
That the bread is a measly disguise.
“Unique! How rare!” as they slide from their chairs.
“This dinner is simply divine!”
The mistress, she grins, grabs the bottle of gin…
“Just wait till we open the wine.”
Slyly sobbing mouse
Crushed under—red from my cold,
Inhumane shadow
My family is a corpse
That hasn’t quite died yet.
One by one, the teeth are
Turning black from the inside out.
When it’s time, they fall down
And disappear down the gullet.
Sometimes the body
Lifts its head off the table
And looks around.
The eyebrow hairs have long fallen out,
But the folds in the skin
Reveal all the discontent
You could ever want to see.
I don’t know who they were.
I don’t think they’re leaving anything behind—
Just a social security number
And a birth certificate,
And school transcripts
And driver’s licenses.
The ink fades, and the filing cabinet
Is full of pale squares of varying sizes.
What is it all for?
And why do they take it all
So seriously?
There’s no point
In the death penalty,
If most people
Are already dead.
But the dead people
That form the skeleton
Of this anti-social parody
Of what we knew
As America,
Will eat the living,
If they are able.
But it was an undeserved death
That redeemed the world.
In the eyes of the wicked,
Who is worthy of slaughter?
All.
Yet mercy comes
From the cruelty
Of a life sentence.
Mercy comes to the man
Who slams his head
Against the wall,
Day and night.
His forehead is bruised
All black and purple.
The walls are stained
With his blood.
Then one day, his head stills.
His eyes open.
We do not choose
To be born into hell.
We do not choose
The sickness we’ve inherited.
We do not choose
The illusion of choices.
From birth,
We listen to voices,
And the voices tell us
What to do.
And most of the world
Listens to the same voice
That is a death sentence unto itself—
A death without bloodshed.
A death of something greater
That could-have-been,
But was never seen—
Never heard—
Never understood.
And when that dies,
The world dies with it.
I don’t get out a whole lot these days,
But I was at the drugstore,
And I found a new issue of Newly Observed.
I couldn’t resist;
There was even a money on the cover.
When I got home, I made myself some coffee
And started reading.
On page 45 it said,
“The Enigma of Primate Nutrition:
New Research Reveals that
Most Primates Eat More Fruit
Than Humans.”
I laughed.
These academics are always so full of shit.
I put the magazine down
And saw that it was ten till noon.
Time again at last.
I went out into by back garden.
The trees were finally showing
Their leaves for the first time
Since last year.
It almost floored me.
I went into my garden shed
And grabbed a vacuum pack
From the deep freezer.
By the time I’d gone down
The cellar stairs to see Bobo,
I couldn’t feel my fingers.
“Here you go, Bobo,” I said.
His eyes glinted.
The tips of his canines poked out
From beneath his upper lip.
I set the pack in his bowl of water.
Bobo was smart.
He knew in a little while that
The flesh would thaw out,
And he’d pull apart the plastic
And start chewing on the knuckle joints
One at a time.
I’d made sure I’d taken off the wedding band
When I’d made that cut—
So he wouldn’t choke on accident.
I smiled back at him,
And he watched me turn up the stairs.
I sat down at the dining table,
And when I glanced down,
I saw the journal again.
God damn if I could remember
The last time Bobo
Asked for a banana.
Everyone seemed to know
Our apartment was haunted,
But they avoided
Talking about it.
I had a friend over.
We talked, drank coffee,
Ranted about the movies.
After the weekend
He was back on the road home.
“That place is definitely haunted,”
He told me, months later.
“It’s something about the hallway,
”The other bedroom on the corner,
“And the bathroom…
”What the hell was it with that bathroom?”
I would have intrusive thoughts—
Sometimes in the form of images.
I saw a man nailed to the cross,
Like Jesus,
But his head was the rotting skull of a goat.
I saw the maggots.
My skin itched,
But there were no flies.
I could see in my mind,
Someone was at the door.
It was the same man every time.
He hid in the entrance,
Around the corner and under the stairs,
And when I was alone,
He’d walk up to the peephole
And breathe
Slowly.
But I never really told anyone about it.
Then one day
My mother walked into my room
With a large, round spray bottle.
“This is sage,” she said.
“I want to spray it in that corner.”
Years before,
She’d had conversations
With a clock radio
That turned on and off
By itself.
She talked to it
As if it were her dead father.
Then she said it was demons.
She had a friend take the radio
So it could be blessed by a priest.
Before the priest could say a word,
The radio fell from his hands
And broke.
So the radio wasn’t a problem
Anymore.
Awhile later we moved an old TV
Into that room.
It eventually became my room.
The TV would turn on by itself,
And the volume would crank up
To the highest setting,
And the walls would shake.
She had another friend drop it off
At the dump.
“We need to cleanse the demons,” she said,
Shaking the little bottle.
I wanted to tell her to get the hell out,
But I simply said, “No, I’m busy.”
She disappeared down the hall.
A few days later,
She snuck into my room
And sprayed the little bottle
In the corner.
By then, it had been years
And that TV had been long gone.
She would sneak into my room
And rearrange things
While I was away.
I would go to bed,
Feeling alone. Violated.
Sometimes I would come back
Into my room and smell sage.
Eventually she couldn’t pay the rent,
And I left.
After that, I found myself
In fearful moments,
But I was never spooked
The way that apartment spooked me
Ever again.
“That’s crazy,” my friend said
After I told him everything.
He went off to bed.
I lay there on the couch
While something scratched
On the backdoor of the house.
It was almost Halloween.
I slept soundly.
Sometimes you have to pull the knife out.
It stings, sliding between your skin
Inch by inch.
You wince, feeling the open puncture in your lung.
You want to scream,
But you’re breathless.
You want to bite out your tongue,
But you’ve got something to say.
You want to run,
But you’re too busy bleeding.
So all you can do is slide it out.
Feel the air with its burning kiss.
Now you’re holding the blade
Between loose, twitching fingers,
And you’re met with a decision
As you stare off into the blood-smeared reflection:
Will you sever your attachment
To the rage that tempts you?
Open letters you never thought to read?
Cut your hair
So you can see what’s looking back
From the mirror?
Remove the splinters from your fingers,
Or dare I say it,
Inflict someone else with the same pain?
Teachers have no business
Being around children;
The only thing they know in life
Is teaching.
There are two types of students
In this life.
One learns to survive in the plastic,
Soft-edge environment.
They find comfort in the system
And play it like a game—
As they were taught to do.
This type of student grows up.
They become so skilled at following orders
And filing papers,
That they go to school again,
And become a teacher.
That way, after they’ve completed their education,
They can turn around
And put more future generations
Through the same hell.
The other type of student
Realizes they’re in hell.
They question the insane fools
That nailed childhood to a cross.
They question the need
For grown adults to beat them
Over the head
With ideas.
The questioning provokes
The system to beat the child harder
Until they either submit,
Or become a rogue to society.
There are two types of students:
The ones that live their own lives,
Or the ones that live the lives of others.
The ones who’ve lived a life
Are worthy of teaching.
But teaching is the last thing
They will ever want to do.
When you go to bed,
always keep a knife with you.
When you’re out alone in the woods,
Always keep your blade ready and sharp.
Look back at the sliver showing
Your reflection
Against the edge.
Another day,
And the only thing to pay
Your stomach’s debt
Is blood—
Fresh from something that
Crawls belabored
Over rocks and leaves.
When you go to bed,
Make sure you keep
The fire roaring.
The night life won’t dare
To cross the path
Of smoke and soot.
Maybe it would be better,
If we could all somehow
Walk backwards through time.
I would find the inventor of the electric camera,
And burn his house to the ground.
Because in the future,
They all look at us through those things.
They’re smaller than the eye of an ant,
And they count every one of your steps.
They know how fast your heart beats,
And they count the number of hairs on your head.
Even the computer, in its primitive state
Is no threat to man.
They’re really not much more than calculators.
But the things they sell at the store—
Those things aren’t computers.
Computers haven’t been around
For a long time.
They’ve got a file somewhere
With your name on it—
And mine too.
They’ve got everything
They could ever want to know
About you.
They’ve got books full
Of all the words you’ve ever said,
And mine too.
They’ve got all the words you’ve ever thought of.
They’ve got every word that was never
Written in this book.
They’ve got everything that’s
Impossible to put
To words—
Except for
God himself.
If I could walk back through time,
I’d find the guys who got the bright idea
To regulate farming—
And created patents and legal landmines.
I’d drop all of them in a pit.
I’d make it illegal for those people to exist.
They’re a disgrace to God,
A disgrace to humanity.
They’re animals.
But even if it was all cleaned up,
And the world was quiet,
And no one was watching—
What would be left of it all?
So here we are,
Around the fire—
The smell of ash
And burning leaves.
Before you go to bed,
Set another heavy log in the pit.
Strop your blade
In case you hear footsteps
At night.
And if you hear them coming,
And you see their flashlights
Beaming in from between the trees—
Don’t make a sound,
And don’t hesitate.
Johnny was the uncle
I never had.
He was my neighbor
On the opposite corner
Of our apartment building
As I was growing up.
He was a proud sleaze.
He had many girlfriends—
Strippers, school teachers,
And sometimes both.
When he was young
He huffed in the gunpowder air
And the Agent Orange
In the war.
One day he was out on the field,
And all his buddies were
At his side.
A live grenade
Fell down from the muddy sky
Right in their midst.
At that moment,
He said an angel wrapped
Its arms around him,
And he was the only one
Who didn’t get
Blown to hell.
Ever since that,
He lived a quiet life.
He paid his taxes,
And smiled
When he saw
A pretty girl.
He put big fat locks
On his front door,
And always kept
His guns on him.
The inside of his apartment
Was like an ornate,
Exotic jungle—
With gorillas
And the three monkeys
And palm leaves,
And cardboard cutouts
Of Hollywood girls.
He had a little round TV
And a VHS collection
With all the good stuff.
He got himself a ton of kittens,
And lived with his girlfriend,
Until he felt a pain in his side.
Within a year or two,
The cancer had
Eaten him down
To nothing.
All his stuff was taken,
Or sold,
Or given away,
Or thrown out.
His girlfriend
Had to move away,
And I’m sure,
The place is
Unrecognizable now.
I guess nobody
Survives
In the end.
I don’t know
If Johnny had a family,
Or if anyone remembers him,
Or if anyone remembers his story.
So here it is,
And there it was,
For what it’s worth.
We smile at people we don’t like
And vote for people we hate,
And buy nice things we don’t want
And talk with people not worth talking to
And get educations we don’t need
And get married to devils
And murder saints
And praise evil
And protect murderers
And appease dragons
And sleep very little
And work very hard
And do what we’re told
And scream with the crowd
And dream with the crowd
And laugh with the crowd
And cry with the crowd
And move with the crowd
And live with the crowd
And die with the crowd,
So that maybe,
For a few minutes,
We won’t feel alone.
I am the thing
That lives inside Daniel Wagner.
When he opens the door
To let you in,
When you see him smile,
When he invites you
To the fresh coffee pot,
When you see the glint
That shines like cellophane
Over his eyes—
That’s me.
Every day, Daniel wakes up—
Or sometimes sleeps in.
Once or twice a month,
Someone will knock at the door—
A visitor. Usually a pleasant one.
I get up and greet them.
Daniel must be knowledgeable.
He must be friendly, and wise,
And inoffensive, if nothing else.
He must be the most engaging person
In any conversation.
He must have that spark—
That warmth that draws people closer.
When it’s time to leave,
The visitor must have this longing—
A pain that comes
From cutting short
A pleasant time.
They mustn’t want to leave—
Though it’s getting late.
I walk to the kitchen,
And I eat.
And I eat and I eat and I eat—
And I tell Daniel that he can relax now.
Thank God, I tell him,
That whole ordeal is over.
Then I lay down in bed,
And I tell Daniel all kinds of things.
I have to change it up a little every night—
Otherwise he’d cease to feel anything
About my words.
We’ll go on this way—
Talking and eating and whispering
All kinds of dreadful things.
And the longer Daniel listens to me,
The more he relaxes in the thought,
That I am him.
And as long as nothing gets in the way,
He’ll believe that I am him,
And he will defend me,
Because in his mind,
I do not exist.
In his mind,
He’s Daniel Wagner,
And everything
Is alright.
It was a foggy night
On the seaside.
“Look,” said a young boy to his grandfather,
“There’s something out there in the water!”
The old man squinted,
And behold,
There was something.
It was a body—
Large and white,
Shrouded in pristine robes.
Suddenly the old man’s eyes were wide.
“No,” he muttered, terrified. “It can’t be.”
He refused to say another word.
The old man dragged his grandson
Down to the church,
Where he called for the priest.
The old man was so afraid
To tell the priest what he’d seen,
That he would only confess it
In a hushed whisper
With no one else
In a locked room.
The priest, startled by the old man,
Called his ministry to him,
And they all walked out
To the seaside.
When they arrived,
The priest fell to his knees.
The young boy saw that his eyes
Were streaming small rivers
Down to the sea.
“It can’t be,’ the priest said.
”But it is.”
There was silence among all of them.
“God has died.”
God? the young boy thought. Dead?
He stared out to the shrouded body.
He watched the stone-still face
Of a calm corpse—
Larger than life itself.
But he couldn’t believe it.
“What are we to do?”
The old man asked.
The whole congregation
Was shocked
To silence.
“We must continue our work,”
Said the priest,
When finally the silence
Was too much
To bear.
The old man nodded,
Thinking it was a
Reasonable proposal.
But their work
Would have to continue
Tomorrow.
No one was allowed
To talk
About what had happened.
If God is dead, the boy thought,
What work is there to continue?
Nobody spoke another word
That night.
The priest and his men
Went out in secret,
And pulled the body
Far out
beyond the edge
of the ocean.
Weeks passed.
Across the village,
All was quiet and still.
Even the birds seemed
Too solemn to sing.
Every Sunday,
The priest would stand
Before his congregation,
And speak for hours
About how God is always there.
And when the audience cheered,
The boy couldn’t help
The pain welling
In the oceans
Of his eyes.
Then one night,
He felt a knowing.
It was not a hearing,
Nor a touching,
Not a word,
And not a voice,
But it spoke to him.
“That was not your father,” he knew.
“I am your father.”
He cried again,
But this time,
It was in a burst of relief.
But who had that been
Out in the water?
He also knew,
From that knowing
Inside him,
That he had to leave.
“This is a wicked place,”
He knew,
“And these people
”Do not know
“What they see
”Before them.”
So in the middle of the night,
The boy grabbed his things,
And left.
And he knew,
If he trusted that knowing,
He would never be afraid
Of anything
Ever again.
He walked for miles,
And when he turned back,
He saw his village—
His home town—
Engulfed in
A hungry fire.
You lied again,
But this time
Mother wasn’t gonna
Let it slide.
What happened to you? she scolded,
And reached for a spoon
On the kitchen counter.
You were only six at the time.
Not enough years to
Anticipate what was coming.
She turned on the burner,
Held the spoon to the cool blue flames
Until it glowed.
Then she made you open your mouth.
When you got to school the next day,
And the teacher saw you couldn’t talk right
Like you used to,
She asked, “What happened to you?”
It was too complicated to explain.
You said you were sick,
And no one questioned it.
Two weeks later, after Father
Had his morning share of vodka,
He coaxed you into your bedroom.
He closed the blinds nice and tight,
And asked you why you weren’t
Making any friends at school.
When you had no answer,
He beat you over the back
With a wrench he’d brought home from work.
For the first time that night,
You didn’t even want to cry.
You lay there in the humid dark of your room,
Cockroaches scuttling around the bed,
And listened to the incessant barking
Of the neighbor’s dog.
That stupid mutt.
Later that year,
Your mother found a lump on her back
That was making it hard to sleep.
She decided she’d live with it.
On Christmas Eve
Several years later,
You didn’t expect anything under the tree,
But you couldn’t sleep anymore.
At four in the morning,
You wandered into your mother’s room,
And found her dead.
She’d left a spoon
And a glass of water
On the nightstand,
And you remembered
How she wouldn’t give you a glass of water
After what she’d done.
You dumped the glass on her face,
And after your father found out,
He wouldn’t utter a word to anyone.
A week after your eighteenth birthday,
After Father came home from work,
He went into the back yard.
He smoked a cigarette
And listened to the radio.
After he’d smoked it down to the filter,
He got his pistol from his closet and
Blew his brains out.
When you found him laying there,
Fragments of his skull
Shattered over the porch,
You called the police
And walked away.
You never looked back.
Thirty years later,
Your eyes are surrounded
By pitch dark circles.
When people see you on the street,
They always ask,
“What happened to you?”
Even though your father’s wrench
Ensured you’d never walk straight again,
You’d found a job at the lumber mill,
Pushing papers.
You decided pretty women
Just aren’t in the cards for you.
When they see your face,
Even the most skilled liars can’t
Hide their wincing.
If they’ll even talk to you, they ask,
“What happened to you?”
Next door to your crummy apartment,
The old man’s dog yaps endlessly.
That Christmas the old man
Gave you the keys to feed the dog
While he’s out visiting family.
One night, at two in the morning,
You grabbed that yapper
By the throat
And twisted
His head off.
Your neighbor
Won’t talk to you anymore
After that.
Another day,
You get the idea
To visit the school
You went to growing up.
You watch the kids
Coming back from Christmas break,
And that gives way
To all sorts of fantasies.
And after the police
Find you,
And they put your face all over
The TV and newspapers,
The world is left wondering
What happened to you?
You watch from prison
As the news anchor laughs,
“He was probably born that way.”
It’s cold
In the bathroom,
And I’m so tired—
Tired of the dirt
That’s filled in the fine-line
Cracks on my heels.
I’m tired of the oil
That slicks my hair
And makes it weep.
I’m covered in sand
And soot
And soil
And salt.
So I crank up the dial,
And a few drops of icy water
Drip down on my arm—
Making me quiver.
I wait until I can feel
The warmth of the steam
Rising up,
And then I sit down
Under the cascade
Of warm water.
You never realize
How stiff your joints are
Until they loosen,
And you never realize
How much your muscles
Have been holding in,
Until you realize
There’s nothing
To hold on to.
The water
Is what reminds you—
Even though
The truth was there
All along.
The steam rushes up
To greet the sliding door—
Forming a glass-bead mosaic
That obscures
The outside world.
Every lie disappears,
Because all that exists
Is here and now.
The dirt lets go
And flows down
To the drain—
An army of little dark specks
Heading out
On a long
Journey.
Time itself
Has vanished,
But I know—
Before long—
That it’s time
To stand.
And as I crank the dial off
And reach for my towel,
I wonder how I could
Have ever lived comfortably
With all that dirt.
What happens is,
People feel the world isn’t good enough.
The clothes aren’t as smooth
As they’d like,
So they find a way
To iron out the fibers
So they slide like silk.
But that isn’t good enough—
Because you see,
People’s skin
Doesn’t shine
The way they want.
So they find a way
To coat the skin
With things that
Make it shine
When it really doesn’t.
But that isn’t good enough either—
Because too much time
Is spent walking out
Under the sun.
So they build a machine
That puts the horse
Six feet under—
A machine that rolls faster
Than the devil
On a moonlit night.
And now everyone
Lives out of their cars.
But that isn’t good enough—
Because bugs and animals
Eat the crops,
So they invent poisons
To kill all the vermin,
But keep the plants alive.
And so what
If they poison us?
Because humanity,
To some,
Is little more
Than an inconvenience.
So they invent
A plastic world
With people who eat
Disposable, plastic food,
And live disposable, plastic lives—
Never feeling the sun
Beneath the layer of shine
On their skin.
They live their whole lives
Not knowing what life is,
And live lives more miserable
Than vermin—
Because at least the vermin
Can sleep
After they dine
Under the cold
Moonlight.
What a time to be alive,
And what a miserable time it is
To work.
You walk into some godforsaken office.
The room has glass windows on all sides,
But they’re covered with tightly-shut blinds.
It’s stuffy and cramped in there
With all kinds of junk,
And there’s a little man sitting at the desk.
That little man
Is your boss.
He’s called you over
To tell you that life
Is going to be living hell for you.
He says,
Between the lines,
That he’s a skilled psychopath,
And looks forward to skinning you alive
The moment he gets the chance.
He asks why the floor
Wasn’t mopped last night.
“Because drug addicts
”were pacing
Back and forth on it, Sir.”
That doesn’t seem
To amuse him.
But it’s the truth.
The rest of your shift that night,
You keep looking over your shoulder,
Waiting to see your boss with a carving knife,
Or perhaps a hacksaw.
You wonder if he’s going to take you out fast,
Or keep you alive
While he savors
Peeling the skin away
From your feet.
One of your coworkers
Says he enjoys working here.
He says, with the biggest smile
You’ve never seen from him before,
That in a year or two,
And if the boss man likes your work,
He’ll raise your pay…
By a dollar.
Wow,
You don’t think,
my life is wonderful
And worthwhile.
Why is it
That every single stuck-up hiring manager
Wants you to lie
Whenever you walk in for an interview?
The whole process
Is founded on an ornate stack
Of carefully structured lies.
“How would you describe
Your previous boss?”
The only way
To answer a question like this,
Is with a lie.
If your previous boss was so wonderful,
You probably would’ve stayed,
Right?
If your previous job was a magnificent
Glowing walk through nature,
Why leave?
But if it’s one thing hiring managers hate,
It’s honesty.
Honesty is a threat
To the air of compliance
That must be maintained
In the workplace
At all costs.
“Why are you seeking
Employment with us?”
We all know the real answer.
The real answer,
Is that you just want to eat
And pay your bills
And save up a little
On the side.
It’s common sense.
But don’t you know,
Common sense
Is illegal here?
All they want to know,
Is that you’re going to
Prioritize your master
Above all else.
They want some kind of lie
About how Company X
Seemed like such a fit
For your long list of skills and interests.
They want to see you scrambling,
Waiting with teary-eyes
To kiss the boots
Of your superiors,
Because,
“here, we’re all like family.”
Your boss once asked you,
“So, what are you going
To do
With your paychecks?”
Of course,
The correct answer is,
“None of your fucking business,
Mussolini.”
But really, there are only
Wrong answers to this question anyway.
You applied to jobs
Where they’d usually
Hire anything that breathes.
No response.
You read about labor shortages,
And how people
Just don’t want to work anymore,
But no one
Answers the damn phone.
Then you pick up
A book written during
The Great Depression.
You read about the “Help Wanted” signs
At businesses
That weren’t hiring.
It’s been about a hundred years,
But I guess the people
Are the same as they ever were.
You read the news
And see people singing praises
Of such a strong economy,
But everyone you know
Is only a few steps away
From running on empty.
People with money
Are looking forward
To being without it.
If they lie
On their job descriptions,
And lie about when they’re hiring,
And expect you to lie along with them,
And lie about your priorities,
And lie just so you can spend your time
And get an extra dollar per hour in a few years…
And you’ll spend every minute they ask of you,
Giving everything to them that you can possibly give,
And show up on time,
And go beyond expectations,
And they’ll still lay you off…
Is it any surprise
The way people act
In this world?
You open and close the cabinet
While you talk.
Why?
While you’re driving down the highway,
You rub your thumbs side to side
Against the steering wheel.
You beat your big toe down on the floor
To a rhythm of a song that no one else can hear.
You draw one line after another
While the voice whines over the phone.
As you lay in bed,
You brush your fingers up against
The folds in the sheets.
You count them one at a time,
Front to back,
Back to front.
The next day,
You find yourself counting,
But don’t realize it until you’ve reached 100.
Your eyes drip with the dew of morning tears,
And you don’t know why.
You scream at the person closest to you,
And tear their heart out,
And chew on the gristle,
And you regret every moment of it.
You don’t even know why you started.
You tear down your child,
Because his questions threaten you,
And for a moment,
You forget what it felt like,
When your parent did the same things
To you.
As you drift off to sleep,
You sway your feet, scissoring them,
Swimming in the sheets.
And when you wake up, you’re still asleep,
And when you go to work, you’re snoring,
And when you talk to people, it’s beautiful gibberish,
And when you think of what your life is like,
It’s all a lie.
And when you’re about to drive
Off the side of the road with your eyes shut,
Someone tries to wake you.
And when they jostle your shoulder,
And bring you to consciousness,
You want nothing more,
Than to kill
The good Samaritan.
It almost burns
The tips of my fingers
To type it.
My grandfather is almost
Completely incoherent.
My grandmother rolls along
In her chair
When she’s strong enough to
Get out of bed.
The clock on the wall
Reads 5.
We’re all tired,
But the conversation
Is far from ending.
My grandfather has been reduced
To a blubbering pile of gibberish,
Barely alive, barely holding on
To what a word means.
He almost doesn’t realize how much his wife hates him.
I guess it’s for the better.
Grandmother barks down the hall,
And the blubbering man complies
With every order, barked out with
Singed vocal chords that stink
Of sour charcoal.
Time is cruel,
But they’re doing it to themselves,
But they’re unaware of themselves,
But they get what they deserve,
But they could easily escape,
But they’re happy where they’re at.
How can people be so happy
In a homemade hell?
How can anyone find satisfaction
In a slow death—
Falling apart
Piece by piece.
How can anyone make
A cage so comfortable
In the hundred-degree summer.
How can fools champion marriage
When there’s no love
Anywhere you go?
How can anyone enjoy a conversation
When the only way forward
Is blood-curdling screams
And broken furniture?
How is there a world outside,
When the people inside
Are rotted out—
Born dead
And enjoying a leisurely
Decomposition?
People look at the screens
And bury themselves in the books
So they don’t have to look down
And see their putrefied flesh.
People have their eyes closed
So the flies don’t land on them.
On the outside, it doesn’t end well
For hardly anyone.
But why are they so willing
To let their insides go to waste?
A young me
Didn’t understand
The American Justice System.
My mother said, “When a conflict happens,
”It is your right to be heard
“By a jury of your peers.”
I thought about my peers.
“That sounds awful,” I said.
“Why on earth would you say that?”
She didn’t understand
That I understood my peers.
One day when I was in the 2nd grade,
We were learning the science of sound.
The class was divided up into groups
And we were given stethoscopes.
I had the stethoscope in my ears,
And the girl next to me
Pulled the diaphragm from my hands
And started banging it on the table.
Thunder clapped inside my head,
And the shots scraped at my eardrums.
I don’t know why
She hated me so bad.
I told the teacher.
The teacher asked us both
What happened.
She said she didn’t
Do anything.
I explained.
The teacher said, “She has no reason to lie.”
So what happened to me
Was my fault,
And I was now in trouble.
Some of the kids realized
They could have fun
Torturing me.
They would laugh to see me in pain.
It didn’t matter.
This is hell.
So no, I thought.
Why on earth,
Knowing what I know,
Would I trust my peers
To act in my best interest?
The adults didn’t seem to get it.
I saw men on death row.
The system didn’t realize they were innocent
Until after they’d been murdered.
I saw people commit terrible acts,
Only to be set free.
I saw teachers take their problems
Out on their students.
I saw adults pick favorites,
And I saw formless crowds
Ready to kill anyone
Who thought differently
From them.
In elementary school,
I saw how nobody
Was trustworthy.
I didn’t realize until I was older,
That what I saw in my peers
Was really the parents of my peers.
But even all these years later,
I still wouldn’t trust them.
Because trusting them
Can kill you.
I laugh
When people praise
A large and fierce company—
By saying it must have been
A gift from God.
The corporation pays their bills
And keeps them warm
In the winter,
And I laugh—
Because it’s only a matter of time,
Before the house of cards falls,
And everyone below
Is crushed flat.
Afterwards,
These people say
The corporation is a
Curse from Satan,
And now—
Those of us watching
See them for the
Liars that
They are.
And I think to myself,
These people wouldn’t
Recognize God
if he walked past them
On the street.
But if they saw
The Devil,
They would strike up
A conversation
And quickly
Become
Friends.
I know,
From inside myself,
That no one on earth
Has kept me alive
And warm
During the winter.
Aren’t there newborns
Who seem to come into the world
With every luxury,
And yet they perish
Despite it all?
God has kept me alive
Through every
Avalanche.
God is the only one
With eyes,
And Satan
Has a sock drawer
Filled with blindfolds,
And I’m sitting here
Laughing.
God has beckoned me
To the back door.
He opens it,
Just a crack,
So I can have a glimpse
Inside.
He’s let me in
On the beautiful
And terrifying
Joke.
Christopher Warren is the author of A Man Upstairs, and The Mirror Opened. When he’s not writing, he’s an avid painter, animator, and musician. He also hosts One Step Within, a podcast about overcoming the world and living a new life without fear, anxiety, or doubt.