O, how ludicrous!
It's been too long since I've seen your face around
It's been too long I've been in this fuckin' town
A few drinks won't ever relieve the burden that is me, the constant dweller in my soul that is an anchor to all that is what is not. I hate that bastard, the smartass punk bitch that holds me back from every glorious moment, that ever cautious analytical self that cripples the bold alpha male cock insecure cum centered industry of the sex drive... God is it disgusting or just plain me, why can't we all accept our mammalian sex drives and fuck the shit out of each other like it's just the cantracepted fun it is

Why the hell do I care? I'm a white male in America. That's nothing to complain about. I haven't been exploited, oppressed, downtrodden, or discriminated against. I have been exploited, oppressed, downtrodden, and discriminated for.

And that really fucking bothers me. That, for my benefit, atrocities are committed daily the world over, whether it's to get me my gasoline for less that $4 a gallon or my t-shirt for less than $10. I am charged less because people I don't know half a world away are paid peanuts, uninsured and with no recourse to unions, as their air and water are polluted all in the name of American capitalism, or economic imperialism.

But why should I care? I don't have to pay so much for the things I like.

They want to keep the Mexicans out, say they're stealing jobs from us.

What jobs?

The jobs we've outsourced to China or India or those abysmal maquiladoras?

And what do I care anyway? I've got my job.

If I didn't have a job, I'd look for one.

If I'm overlooked for a job because someone else is willing to do it for less money, that's capitalism.

A competitive market. Right?

But what do I care?

If I get passed over for a job in favor of someone who barely speaks English, my shortcomings must have outweighed theirs.

That's the way it works.

All this bullshit about "illegal" or "alien" or "status" or "citizenship," so much fixation on where somebody is from, not where they're going.

I take it back, they don't care where somebody is "from." Ask any illegal Canadian.

They care that somebody is darker of pigment, speaks with an accent, can talk in a language that they can't understand. It makes them suspicious, paranoid, fearful.

Suspicion, paranoia, and fear make people stupid. Stupid as fuck.

Too stupid to see that they are trampling the beauty they claim to protect, corrupting what they want to keep pure, denying to others that same Dream they cling to for themselves, pissing on the graves of the noble spirits they invoke to defend their selfish ways.

Jesus was a hippie. Jesus was a Commie. There is no Christian Capitalism, not if you want me to believe those words mean what you say they mean. Pick a side. Make sense.

I love America, and I love the people who love America. I love the people who want to make this their home, and possess enough of the spirit of Civil Disobedience to jump over the fences and the frivolous and unnecesarily long and difficult process of legal immigration, thereby making proud Thoreau, Patrick Henry, Ben Franklin, or any of the rest of our Proud American Criminals.

But what do I care? I'm in. If they're in, or if they're out, what difference does it really make to me, to my life?

The worse things are for everyone below me, the better off I am. Right? Isn't that how it works?

Can we find some other way to make it work? Some way that involves compassion, cooperation, equality?

Some way that further elevates our species, past our territorial animalistic impulses and into our more human, more spiritual tendency to love one another unconditionally?

But what the fuck do I care? I'm doing well enough to be complacent.

I can give you reassurance, friend,
But I cannot fool myself
There is too much spinning and I close my eyes
But the world still churns my stomach
I see through red lids faces I call my own
Taking and raping with backhanded slaps
The souls of the whole world
We are all the children of Kings and Queens
We are all barbarians, couth and cruel
Civilizing by the rifle and murdering with our handshakes
Our sisters and brothers. Oh, bother, Oh, brother, why bother?
Topple with every birth the towers of ancestral knowledge
I can teach you to kill, but to love and forgive
And to live like a free being, we can only learn
At our expense or neglect at our expense.
Give me, gimme gimme, dammit, mine and yours
Us and Them, Anti-Pro-Ambivalent ambiguous
When do we realize there's just Us, Just us
And justice is accepting Them as Us
God Bless Us, goddammit, we've too far to go
Too much to grow to flower. History's almost over
Or it's just barely beginning, and we choose which
Has it been a good run? Really, how much farther can we go?
Each stride is longer and faster than the last
The Golden Days passed longer and longer ago
And why don't we say They Are Coming Up
Chin Up, It's Just Around The Corner
It'll All Be Better Soon, Once We Figure This Out?
I totter in a twilight optimism
A hobo asks me for a light and I oblige
He hands it back when he is finished
-------------------------------------and I ask him for some darkness
"Keep busy til the bomb goes off unnerneath ya"
And I say "Sure" and he flashes a peace sign as he walks away
I never know if that's a blessing or wishful thinking
Or what's the difference between, but, God,
Am I gonna keep busy til that bomb goes off

Drunk in the heat of the day and I can feel every drop of sweat trickle and tickle its way out of my tingling body, every tiny imperceptible hole screaming with the effort of pushing toxins from my blood. Harry Hou-fucking-dini and Sigmund Avoid. Pour a martini and forgive me if I'm paranoid, but I don't think that you're here for what you think you're here for. You want to know something about me, but there's nothing to know. I guarantee I'm as much a fool as you, or more. Talk to me, for just a second, and all you'll hear is yourself talking back, echoes of thoughts you had and were too terrified to put to words. Don't be scared. There is nothing to fear from an idea alone. Life is a trip and ideas are maps we can choose to follow, and whether you're careful or not doesn't matter at all so fuck being careful, be whatever you are. I will, and the breathing is ragged but it persists. Death is only the next step and I promised to never fear progress, because God told me it was His only way into the world, so die and smile while you do it. Die and Let Die, the old ways have to pass on or we will all pass on and end together. Breaking tiles with errant feet we dance a dance not yet invented and soon to be studied, we become the sculptors of history and hoist onto our shoulders the feet of every generation to come. We do not hold our children under the water lest it be Styx, and not to die and set us free but to strengthen and enslave our own fallen memories in service of the future of God and Man and Art. The seeds of Something More among rocky soil just wait for you to shit on them like we all shit on whatever is good before it can breathe and it suffocates or it concentrates and sprouts into the sun. Where are you now, on your way out of the shit? Me too.
Hold my hand, don't mind the sweat. We're almost there. What do you mean? What do I mean to you, what do you mean to you? Drift along just a little further, breathe in, reach up. Shhh.

There.
Cough, and you lost it, didn't you? Me too. I always fucking lose it. Let your eyes drift down again, but you won't get it back. It's ok. You're not supposed to.
Aaaaaaaaahh-ah! Stairs, lifting, lifting... come along now...

Where would I be if it wasn't what it was? The thought of it crosses my mind way too much with a bitter clenched hiss and a guilt ridden buzz. I don't like it but I live it and I won't make the cut if I decide it's not worth it, so I bring the worth up. And I curse and I curse, shit, fuck, Goddammit what did I do to deserve this much jammin me up and it hurts and I'm served too much for me to eat and I burst like I'm cursed with just too much to handle and I buckle in my shoulder the way any mortal man will and I fall down but it don't put out the candle... So I stand still for a moment and I'm glowin and I can deal with the knowin', and the doin', and the showin' showin' fluent, and we'll go there and go through knowing they'll all misconstrue it but it's cool, if it's half true than it's half more than they once knew. Shit.