070323C
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We deny everything
that was considered decent
or was believed sensible
because none of that is
anything believed true.

There is no compassion
for reasons or truths
those being kicked aside
wherever they protrude
their pitiful contentions.

We use the dullest points
to do the most damage
avoiding sharp talk
and leaving sharp arguments
to become over painted walls.

White wash over white
becomes the new normal
and colours remain secrets
carefully kept well away
from any public scrutiny.

Common slogans
replacing the great ideas
and the symposium descends
to being a mob of wrinkles
babbling drunken limericks.

That substitutes quite easily
for the continued gathering
of any relevant intelligence
between supermarket visits
to review the price changes.

Nothing worn out of place
that was not to be found
at a discount sell off
of dulled down sacks
made by small yellow hands.

Everything has changed
since they legislated away
the reality of any real needs
and whatever was left
remained only in psychology.

It is in the subtle wording
that only experts understand
which most keep secret
because they fear being
smeared out into nothingness.

The stains of those who were
remain a sort of warning
to those careful of everything
that they wear or say
for fear of being noticed.

The same fear you can see
in the eyes of any deer
when it is standing naked
staring into the headlights
of an oncoming rush of traffic.

The young are the most afraid
trying to find acceptable vices
and officially sanctioned crimes
to fill their minds and time with
while contemplating death.

They are the most intent
to intensely feign their courage
in any convincing enough way
but you know there is no truth
in their coldly suspicious eyes.

Some stand around and watch
until they feel emboldened
to encourage someone else
to jump from the ledge
simply to justify a usual horror.

They usually all jump
when they are prodded to jump
without looking forward
having become fully accustomed
to assuming nothing is ever there.

There is still some vague need
that some cannot fully explain
for something more memorable
than a gourmet burger
and a hard core but green shake.

Youthful desire is to mentor
the old into the newest ignorance
conducting purges and pogroms
of the hopelessly unindoctrinated
so that they cannot score points.

To say the judgments are severe
becomes an understatement
and the really popular tunes
organ grinders play for monkeys
are worse than bubblegum.

There is no way to settle
and no one to really settle with
because if you express blue
you will be tormented with red
until you vomit out the urge.

The dead fish has risen
and a perfect zero is the key
to obtaining elusive inclusion
into a slogan rich pseudo bliss
evasive of costly prescriptions.

Most do not want to be anything
that might attract any attention
and their defeat is matter of fact
becoming their common cause
for what passes as celebration.

Happiness is something
that is convincingly faked
or is alternatively available
in pill form being dispensed
primarily to corporate drudges.

Strict gratitude and happiness
have become the new noir
similarly striving to compete
with the daily news monster
as to other types of tragic ends.

You secretly want to go back
to somewhere in the past
or at least back to sleep
to avoid everything woke
and aggressively progressive.

There seems to be no difference
between political marches
and funeral marches
in terms of actual impact
on the real quality of living.

The constant threat is there
as to strangulation in red tape
along with the steady depletion
that bleeds out inadequate funds
into endless bad bargains.

It was always a best friend
who ended up killing you
in one devious way or another
and no one to introduce you
to those mythic better people.

You already know the truth
that there are no interesting types
being invited to today's parties
so you become thankful
that no one asked you to go.

You do not have what it takes
because it took everything
that it could possibly take
and then demanded a lot more
in a typical extortion racket.

Sometimes we are very afraid
of opening those empty packages
and extremely disappointed
that there is nothing there
beyond attitude filling space.

A man staggers as he says
there will be no more ants
in post colonial America
because ants are colonial insects
and they have to be decolonized.

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180323A
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You know that it is over
before it ever really begins
but you would like to believe
it was not always that way
and perhaps it really wasn't.

That becomes the real catch
same as a fly swims in soup
or a fly flops around in ointment
as to whether there was a was
or whether the was never was.

They are erasing history
and have gotten only that far
as to creating that much ambiguity
between what was once believed
and what was once the truth.

As simple as leaving you out
while selectively including the new
displays of shorter term memories
while what you wishfully recall
is being put into complete doubt.

Eventually that too will fog out
hiding away the past landscape
making its monsters uncertain
and concealing its treasures
from any possible discovery.

The answer you are being given
is there were no treasures
and the treasure maps were false
leading that wild goose chase
until your goose was cooked.

Once you realize that as a fact
you could be pronounced cured
filled with endless rumours
as to what you will win
once that verdict is formally given.

Whomever controls the past
can control the entire future
until the past becomes a product
being constantly reworked
in terms of all future dictates.

Whatever you thought it was
it is not anymore
leaving only revised narratives
and their endless corrections
until we know nothing at all.

We cannot do anything
that we thought we once could
but that becomes the big flaw
in a future that has decided
that we never really could.

There is no way to argue that
so everyone eventually pretends
that they are going along with it
as an unconditional truth
of commonly believed lies.

It would have done no harm
but that would have been too much
of any sort of freedom
and what if someone else
might actually want some.

You are supposed to want
only what everyone else wants
and is supposed to want
including joining up with those
who only want to want in that way.

Thinking has grown unpopular
relative to blindly doing
whatever falls within the limits
of coming to nothing at all
wallpapered with stock phrases.

The call echoes in the streets
to bring out the dead
so we heap remains of desires
along with ambitions and dreams
onto that tragic barrow.

They wheel it all away
to where clowns dissect it all
into whatever is ugliest
washed from that slaughter
by streams of laughter.

We were dead to it all
long before anything began
and they will call that destiny
for lack of any better name
but that too needs no truth.

We wave goodbye
forbidden to even mourn
the remains of our authenticity
tossed with the discards
that no one claimed or wanted.

There was only one lesson
and that was the only one
that we refused to learn
as to the utter futility
involved in any actual search.

Our scarecrow selves
with headpieces stuffed full
of abortive straws of a chance
pulled from random haystacks
to become brittle mulch.

Promising something new
will always grow there
from that decaying mass
of irrelevance and details
cancelling out any value.

We once cherished illusions
that we could find each other
in one or another manner
as to specific terms of reference
only to learn it is never the case.

I do not know you
and you do not know me
beyond bits of information
rendered stray and incoherent
in any quantum data stream.

It is always something else
that forever stands in the way
until the clock becomes tired
but no turning it back to having
any real possibilities.

The card that was needed
was never the one that was dealt
but we insisted on playing
in that hopelessly vain belief
that anyone can really win.

You have to play to win
but there is that dealer
who refuses to deal us in
declaring any play too rich
for the lint in our pockets.

I cannot win you
and you cannot win me
so we try to hang on
to whatever is left
that fills a longing space.

Going for broke is normal
if it is done in small increments
over long periods of time
coming to the same nothing
as would any other wager.