Haiti

I am deathly poor with a seven point zero,
The bloody t-shirt I wear features hand me down American heroes,
I am barely a number, barely a zero.

Rubble, rubble everywhere, and not a drop to drink,
Most of you wouldn't even drink from my pre-earthquake sink.
The soft whispers of death, are louder than you think.

God must not love his Caribbean Roman Catholics,
Collapsing the west's poorest country, his illogical mathematics.
Meanwhile banks take record profits; capitalist antics.

The stench of the stench of bodies, and death lives.
A one year celebration on the Hudson, a whopping 155 lived,
And here in the Caribbean, 50,000+ graves we dig.

We interrupt this coverage, for politically charged ads,
And return to a solitary daughter lost in rubble, and one camera loving dad.
American lives are not worth more than those digging up bodies with Haitian hands.

I'm just dermis and calcium, feather on air,
An exoskeleton of concrete dust, I'm barely there,
The octogenarian of pain, lost the ability to care.

An eight hundred millionaire, arguing for a pathetic half hour,
While I'm rescued from darkness, claustrophobia and silence after 50+ hours.
There is no god, there is sorrow.

We must warn you of the intensity of these death filled images,
Keep that reality blindfold on your fat faced kids.
Our developed lives will never be like this, so don't think-of-it.

The deepest black hole in space has to compete with a mass grave.
Resorting to civil war medicine and the limbs that it takes.
Is this sympathy or apathy that I have made?

I can't imagine any future, in this recently quaked head,
In a world where abandoning god is easier than abandoning debt.
I know that without any god, I'll still receive peace in death.

Ft. Hood

I wonder how all those parents/spouses/children of the over 5,000 who died in Iraq and Afghanistan, or those of the 18 veterans who kill themselves everyday, feel about flags at half-mast and up to the nanosecond coverage of the memorial for the 13 who died last week. The yellow ribbon guy must be doing very well this week.

No one deserves to die from violence, especially young men and women who signed up because they (we) believed in an ideology that is 100% dead. There is no camaraderie in the military (or our country), minus the lower enlisted, but even that changes once people get promoted. And that the idea of 'freedom' we were preserving by signing up was simply the freedom for contractors to ruin lives and rob our tax dollars. A preachy, redundant thing to say, but a truth nonetheless.

With that said, in the larger scope of the 2000 decade of war, PTSD, lies, missed families, divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse, and suicide; the Ft. Hood shooting simply does not compare in terms of violence, unnecessary loss of life and the looming/continuing collapse/degradation of our civilization.

Just a week or so prior to this incident, 14 soldiers died in Afghanistan. And the only fucking reason it received any media coverage whatsoever was because President Obama went to Dover airfield to salute the dead as they came off the plane (which most likely was political). The only reason it got any coverage was so the left/right wing media could either praise/condemn the president.

And also, NO ONE (besides CBS ) talks about how many veterans commit suicide when they come home. I think the most harrowing statistic is that veterans are twice as likely to commit suicide than non-vets. This CBS article states that there are nearly 18 veteran suicides a day. In case you don't know, take the 13 who died at Ft. Hood and add 5 to that, and that's how many veterans kill themselves everyday. In case you didn't know.

And also, nearly 23% of the homeless in the US are veterans, even though 89% of those received honorable discharges. How is it we allow this to happen? How? How? You must understand the feeling I get when I am in my car and see a vet with a pizza box sign begging for help and he doesn't understand that I fear one day I may be him, and that in some weird way I want to be him, so he doesn't think I'm the same empty person like all the others that pass him by. This also seems like a tragedy.

This is yet another disgusting result of living in a 'for-profit' world. To suggest that I don't have compassion for those who lost their lives at Ft. Hood is ridiculous. But we must understand that this sensationalism is nearly an equivalent to spitting on the graves of those thousands who fell before this incident, and whose death's may have had an impact on the shooter's motives. Suggesting it's a tragedy that 13 soldiers who died while preparing to go to war, and could have possibly died in Iraq or Afghanistan without anyone dropping the flag in their honor, is like saying it's a tragedy you spilled water on your swimming suit on the way to the pool.

If you truly want to honor a soldier, you never should send them to an illegitimate and unnecessary war in the first place.

Have a Happy Veterans Day, and make sure to buy a car or sofa in the name of the true spirit of military remembrance holidays.

Memorial Day Sale

My father calls me every memorial day, and says "They tell me I'm supposed to thank a veteran today." I tell my dad that he's only supposed to think of me today if I'm dead and gone. I tell him to call me back in November, when the holiday for surviving veterans comes around.

How about that, instead of making sure my fellow veterans and I don’t end up homeless when we get home and/or giving us every benefit we deserve, we get a bullshit holiday in November where school kids who have zero concept of war except for maybe the TV show Army Wives, and propaganda style commercials meant to get them to sign a contract, have to stand at 11:11 on November 11th for a moment of silence. Well, at least that's what they made me do in my school.

And how about this, for the ones who don't make it home, they get one day near the end of the month of May where people get to miss work and throw footballs and Frisbees and get drunk and eat good food all in the name of their sacrifice. How about that.

I propose that we just end all wars, that way we don't have to observe these ridiculously inept holidays. But unfortunately I'm just too smart to realize that in our world peace is nothing but a 5 letter word that looks cute on a bumper sticker.

I would imagine that whoever owns the company that makes those mini American flags just adores the end of May.

I view Memorial Day with the same lens that I view Valentine's Day, Earth Day and Mother's Day/Father's Day. You should always treat your significant other with respect and love as long as you choose to and you don't need expensive flowers and stuffed animals to do so. Picking up trash on the highway one day a year in April will not save the planet. And you should always respect and love those who raised you as long as they did a good job and deserve the respect.

Maybe if every single day of our lives we were reminded that people come home from far away places with flags draped over their coffins, we could all be a little more hesitant when it came to allowing 600 billion of our tax dollars to be spent on guns, and tanks, and nuclear weapon storage.

And those flags on those coffins? They're American flags. The same flags that car dealerships and furniture stores wave when they have their Memorial Day blowout sales. Using the death of good soldiers in an effort to sell a $500 sofa or a used Honda Accord. If you ever need to describe the United States to a foreigner, tell them that example.

Maybe if we all realized that there are some very sad, confused and grieving mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers and grandfathers and grandmothers and children and cousins and aunts and uncles and friends who get cripplingly despondent on more than just one day a year.

And what's so hard about remembering those who died in the name of "freedom" every single day? I do it, it's killing me for sure, but I do it. Mostly because I have no choice, but I can sure as hell guarantee that I would NEVER, ever, send young, promising men and woman to a war in order to sweat and die, especially if it's completely and totally unnecessary.

Freedom, yea right. The freedom for bomb makers to make a ridiculous amount of money at the expense of innocent human life.

Grief does not follow a 365 day schedule. Grief cannot be let out one day, and put away the next. This Memorial Day, don't only think about those who have paid the ultimate sacrifice, also think about those people who are doomed with the daily reminder of their loss for the rest of their carbon based lives. Maybe then you will learn something about loss, and war.

You don't even have to wait until Memorial Day to do this, you can start today. But if it's too hard to think about the people who died so Macy's could have a 50% off sale in their name, well, then just pick yourself up a yellow car magnet.

Two's Day

I drop it in with my kick like john stanier slamming the skins whats so bad about sin? pour smoke out of a hole above my chin like my name is Andre three. thous.and and I spit rhymes like hot coffee, just cocoa for the youngins, i dont want to get caught like lohan with mascara runnin, whats so funny? Mr. Carlin with the initials GC. now I see, now i believe, now ive got a bullshit american dream to achieve, a son and daughter to leave, and enough CO2 expelled to help my race push ctrl-alt-deleeeeete.

Coma Toes

I paint dash lines like yellow dripping icy melt all across your floor,
Painting my way out of the front door.
I paint my face black and stay in the middle of the middle of the night,
I am always right.

Heart breakers? Risk takers? Money makers? Fucking fakers,
All those billions of fakers.

And who do you think sat frustrated dreaming up chaos to sweep across,
Who do you think is completely lost?
Who do you think sat with eyes red, feet and legs all tangled in a mess,
Ripping all the threads of the sheets off of this here bed?

Leaf rakers, medicine takers, tax payers and baby makers,
Fucking fakers.

And now all I'm doing is playing catchup with Death,
Paging through all these chronological regrets,
Interest rates, healthy markets and the slavery of debt,
Everyone around me trying to convince themselves there is no death.

Fakers.

blegch

My fist in the air, blocking out the sun If only I had a definite record of all the crying I'd done The business of being an alcoholic's son All my miles and measurements, I'm feeling stung Keep your pennies out of my wishing well my thoughts lead me to dwell, melt and swell Got an internal organ with 4 chambers forged in Hell My soundtrack, beats me feelings that I could never tell And I am still trying to tickle myself well, again, But this internal organ, so swollen, please mend got a parasitic adventure of death in this head. drawn and spent, ripped apart, so much for these 4 chambers in my heart. So much for these 4 chambers in my heart. So much for these four chambers in my heart. warm and sticky riding fluid into your center, i materialize words and letters, im a goliath of your dreams and i make everything better. i make everything worse and hellish, things i say are disgusting and brackish, i leak radiation and my teeth are yellow, hello, goodbye, no more hello's.

Gastronomical

She stood like my mother holding a newport cigarette
the fake smile of depression soaking everything wet
and my beams reflect the eyes of a ghost outside
My fogged breath, and the proof that I will die

And now I float above the air, United Airlines 747
I make realities; you are all 1-10, I am eleven
And the benadryl soaking my cells, coach class hell
Tripping the Atlantic, kingdoms in the clouds that swell

And as I dig at the insides of my weak guts
I am candlelit eternity introvert, drowning in love
And as I trip through my own catacombs I create inside
I find a static vision of you happily haunting me all my life

My eyes will be kept shut air tight, and my ears peaked
to hear all those frequencies laid out neat
And my past is NOTHING but mine
I'm teaching myself to travel time.