Participate

I refuse to participate. The world is rigged and you all started this before I could agree to the terms. Once I was born, I was never formally approached and I suppose you all thought that everything should just be grandfathered in. And I suppose that you believed if you stayed in motion, the years would pass before I figured out the scam. But here I am. It may have taken a few decades. Perhaps I should have called your bluff when everything became obvious. I am not sure why I waited. In an odd yin to your yang, I did not formally approach anyone about my decision. I just quit and thought the years might pass and soon you all would have waited too long to notice I wasn’t taking part. But the thing about an unstoppable force and an unmovable object is that if they don’t actually meet the force keeps going and the object being unmovable doesn’t mean much.

Hide the Body

Watching an old video of Henry Rollins telling some television audience that being born in a body that functions is a miracle. Still feel the urge to destroy my own. Referencing myself in the same sentence as Thích Quảng Đức would be an insult to him, but it’s something in that realm. Self-immolation is too frightening, too painful, and also too quick - I need to ease into it. My own views are also a little hard to sort out, but they feel more self-absorbed. The pain of the world weighs heavily on my mind, but when it’s all said and done my concern ends up being largely about the emotional anguish I experience as a result of others’ suffering. I know you’re not supposed to admit these sort of things and it’s even possible I’m being too harsh in my judgement of myself, but there’s nothing more American than an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ attitude toward the rest of the globe.

The destruction I desire toward my own flesh and bone is some sort of primal scream I cannot emit. I’ve never been capable of the wordless shout. It feels immature, ‘use your words.’ But where words are lacking or rather they feel out of reach - no order seems to convey the meaning intended - what’s left? I am not sure if I want to explode or implode; I am not sure if I want any of this to be noticed - if it’s some kind of cry for help and if a ‘cry for help’ is inherently a person falling short of death because they don’t truly desire the end of their life or if that is some misinterpretation of the phrase I picked up in my life.

I feel everything. I feel the callousness of the world and whether it’s a result of my inability to believe what we have allowed to be done to our fellow human beings throughout all of history up to this very moment or if I simply feel that the fucked up societies we’ve decided to create and maintain are an affront to me by forcing me to live within what is clearly an evil place and the toll that following the norms of such a place takes on one’s mental health, the feeling of complete helplessness to fix or improve anything even if it’s entirely so I can feel less bad about myself and what I have grown accustom to accepting makes me want to destroy my body. Or at least I believe that to be the case. I am not clear if I want to destroy my body or if I want to not exist - at least not on this plane. I do not want to be perceived. I want to disappear. I am not sure if destruction of my physical being is my ideal method to reach my end goal or merely the only route I am capable of enacting.

Henry Rollins told the audience not to do heroin and ruin your healthy body. I spent years drinking as much as I could get my hands on. Like much of this, I am not entirely clear on all of the details: was I attempting to drink myself to death? Was I simply trying to put some wear on my body for a slow destruction of what I am trapped in? Was I merely trying to feel something that I thought I could reach at a higher state of intoxication and I am not trying to revise history to make the drinking about destruction of my body? As I continued drinking I occasionally thought about how alcohol was poison. I tried to wrap my head around why we drink it at all. With too much in the system, one vomits it up. I guess the same could be said about all food, but alcohol seemed like different beast; drinking a little bit give an effect of impairment. It was hard to not consider that we were poisoning ourselves regularly while trying not to not go so far as to make it deadly - not that the thought ever crossed my mind while I was drinking that I needed to not poison myself to death. On a few rare occasions, I had the thought that I felt way too drunk way too early - sometimes because the sun was still out or sometimes because the people I was with didn’t appear nearly as intoxicated. Though that judgement was rare and my decisions to cut myself actually resulted in a few of my worst nights which I won’t detail, it was never a matter of concern that I might be about to give myself alcohol poisoning until I had already gotten to the point where I could feel the vomit coming.

I want to destroy my body because I do not want to exist in this world created before I got to decide if this is how anything should be. I do not want to exist because existing feels like a passive approval of famines and genocides and so many other atrocities and unnecessary sufferings and I do not want that on my consciences. But I am too much of a coward for anything obvious, anything anyone would notice. I do not want attention. I do not want to cause a scene. But I am also scared to do anything too drastic even out of sight. I have watched all the PSAs and I have bought into all the generic advice and talks of right and wrong. I am too much of a goody two shoes to do something I know to be “wrong” so I work on the edges. I find things in the grey areas to do.

I want to not exist. But all I have to show for it are shirts that don’t fit like they used to and scares I had somehow convinced myself would go away, abrasions I am too ashamed to let anyone see. The damage I’ve done to my body was done with unclear thoughts about what I wanted to do and why I wanted to do it. I cannot explain to anyone what they may see because I do not know what happened by accident and what was done with intent and if I still feel that way or if I can still justify these things under a newer ideology.

Lame Duck (rough)

The days are counting down. The election was over. Soon there will be a new president. I knew this was coming. I signed up for this. I wielded the power of the most powerful country on the planet for four god damn years. It was a good run. I accomplished a lot. I served the people and they are grateful.

I will try to get a few more things passed and I will have my team reach out to the new administration to help them with the transition. I guess my last act will be helping explain the job to my successor. And then he’ll watch me die. With everyone else. He’ll watch me hang and then he’ll place his hand on the Bible and be sworn in.

He seems like a good man. I think he’ll continue some of the things I got the ball rolling on, but one can only get so far on these projects in four years. So I should count myself lucky to know that the next president will not put a halt on what I began. I can go out knowing that my life will not be taken in vain. I did not spend four years working my ass off for this country only to be hanged right before everything I did is undone.

I realize the threat of my work being dismantled wasn’t that high. Neither candidate was out to destroy the goodwill I’ve been building. Since implementing a death penalty for being the president, a lot less power-hungry candidates run. It skews toward people who want to sacrifice for their country. That’s not the official reason given of course.

It would be nice if we were honest and told the citizens that making the presidency the ultimate sacrifice has removed the majority of the worst candidates from running. Instead we’ve got some Wicker Man bullshit. But that’s what it took to sell the Christian right on the concept. So now I have to die for what the pain this country inflicts on the rest of the world. I tried to reduce the harm, but the only way this country can be this country is if we rape and maim the rest of the world. And a person who kills thousands must die in this country. Ironically enough, the federal death penalty was abolished by the third president to serve under these conditions. But still, this country says that we must sacrifice me for the sins I committed while in office.

As much as things have improved, there is still a collective delusion. This country can do no wrong. The citizens who benefit from the horrors inflicted by their government have no blood on their hands. The government and all the people it takes to run it bear no responsibility for what is done. No, it is my fault. I must be sacrificed for what I did. Solely.

And for some, it is about fairness. The punishment fits the crime. For others, there is more superstition. They remember 9/11. But the right finally lost its stranglehold on the memory. Thus it became understood not as a lesson about being hyper vigilant about anyone who doesn’t love this country, but as what happens in response to what we do to people in other countries. But, this is still the United States and we do still have our bizarre beliefs we won’t let go no matter overwhelming evidence to the contrary. So sacrificing one man, me, is said to ward off any repercussions.

If the general public was more concerned about where their freedom comes from, they might see how much money we spend on national security, they might look at our military budget - and they could put two and two together and realize there may be another reason there aren’t more terrorist attacks. But they’ve been sold on my execution and there’s nothing they love more than tradition.

Mask Off America

The streets aren’t paved with gold

They’re lined with rubber-coated lead

Mask off, America

The tears of George Stinney weren’t enough to quench our thirst

Everything we own is dripping with blood

Everything we’ve earned was pried from another’s grip

And now we spend the rest of our waking life

Fending off those who might try to take it

Is freedom supposed to feel like choking

On the stress of hoarding the most objects?

And the pain in my gut when I start to wonder if this is all there really is won’t go away

But this empty feeling is still better than the despair of those who still dream that someday, if they work very hard, they too will have countless unsatisfying things

Fatalist

Look at the egoist, writing about his woes while the world burns. If he stays up until 3 watching the police assault people on Twitter will it absolve him of his sins? If he stays up until his eyes are heavy, as he drifts in and out of consciousness, will that be sufficient support? Someone must witness the atrocities or it is all for naught. And if he oversleeps from exhaustion and loses his job mid-pandemic, then surely no one could claim he does not care about the plight of his fellow countrymen.

But no one cares. Facebook shares aren’t sufficient activism and he’s beyond serotonin bursts from “likes'“ (though, notifications in the midst of an internet squabble fill him with perfect combination of dread and giddiness that keeps him absolutely glued to an unhealthy extent, but I digress) yet it still makes him feel hopeless when an article about the impending police state mere miles away can’t garner a single reaction. And the limited amount of in-person interactions mostly with family just reinforce…whatever it may be, it can’t be a class divide, but something of the sort.

And to write? Against the hopelessness. It’s not more difficult than it previously was. It’s mostly laziness. But he is not smart enough to tackle what must be tackled. And the facts are the facts. And if we as a people cannot even agree on them then what hope is there? So he writes in feelings and half-formed thoughts, but he hasn’t tasted the teargas. And it truly is just pessimism, pure and simple, and perhaps he cried wolf one too many times - though is it truly crying wolf if one warns about a real wolf too early?

While the country waits for the nationalists to arrive at their doorstep and haul them away, the painful truth is how many will remain comfortable, even after they’ve realized it is too late. Every World War II movie made Nazi Germany look like a living hell and here we are, just going about our days. Some of us doing our best to counter atrocities, but most of us - including him - doing a minimal amount and many doing nothing at all. Waiting for the right time to rebel. Waiting for things to get bad. But they won’t. Or they will when it is far far far far too late. When there’s no one left to witness what happens when one waits for fascism to announce itself by name.

Untitled

I’ll dance Volk at your wedding. I’ll mumble incantations under my breath at your funeral.

I hope your husband has a big dick and a big enough heart to let his guard down around you. I hope you don’t lie awake in bed at night thinking about how every decision you’ve ever made, whether actively or passively, has led to this exact moment and you won’t find out what’s behind the other doors. I hope you don’t start your day looking at a stranger over your morning coffee and think about how there’s some Palestinian-who-never-got-a-chance-to-become-a-refugee-because-the-IDF-shot-him-dead-for-throwing-a-rock-during-a-protest-at-the-border who could have loved you better. There’s not a man who lost his job and then his home and then his life as he froze to death on the streets of Chicago who was destined to be your soulmate so here you are. Or perhaps a teenager gunned down at school or he survived school, but got busted for something or other no one really remembers and the judge decided to make an example out of him and threw the book at him and after a decade inside with no end in sight he took his own life or maybe he did his time and got out, but found the job market less than welcoming to an ex-con so he went back to selling drugs or tried out selling his body and a cop or maybe a civilian who was taking advantage of anti-sex trafficking laws got him in a secluded area and now you’ll never raise a child together. Or maybe he had the misfortune of being a Uighur Muslim in China or Rohingya Muslim in Myanmar. Or maybe he’s still alive: that nice Latino man ICE deported for a decade old unpaid parking ticket. Or maybe he’s white: that angry young man screaming about how you’d burn in hell as you entered the clinic. You went inside and had the procedure done and that man went his own way. Or he’d already gone his own way too long ago and now there was no redemptive quality left in him, any signs of your true one and only long ago vanquished from his body. Or maybe you lost him in a way that isn’t so dull, something that would make headlines: one day he came home from school and his mentally unstable mother decided to lock him in a closet and feed him less and less with each passing day and after a neighbor had not seen the boy-who-would-have-grown-up-to-become-the-love-of-your-life for a month, they decided to call the police.

I hope you don’t ponder these alternate lives with other (better?) lovers while browsing the Craigslist Missed Connections section because anti-sex trafficking laws got rid of the men for women section and all the other personals. Because you picked the man you’re with and confirmed to Regis Philbin that it was, in fact, your final answer.

Your husband is here – or rather I’m here; I’m the one invited, it’s his event – and those don’t look like crocodile tears to me. I hope he never remarries because no one could ever live up to the bar you set.

“Untitled” was the only piece written for a zine entitled Pretend to Be Asleep which was never completed. It was inspired by Suspiria (2018), “Wedding” by Serengeti, and, obviously, politics.