I am godlike, void of scruples. i am children's guns in school. whoever is not with me is against me. whosoever does not gather with me scatters. with a passion for apathy my army of innocence advances along the machinelike landscape both toward and away from you are made to be broken (orders). facts become fictions satisfied by Faith my true field. my experience of you is invisible to you. i'm compelled to explain the relation copula of our science (process by proxy) dredged out of this transaction. this unlikely crucifixion is the prescription for alienation. i sacrifice and thus am normal, subject to the stars your brain creates that i imagine. flushed down by fate, the intimacy of outcome, process by proxy, i am hollowing to a mask. an object of my successes, america, a malcontent, stagnating insofar as i am satisfied, infected insofar as your reflection. this miracle bubbled out of a box. there's nothing between us but each other. midgets choose midgets. america, its reflection at a distance. you relax while i contract. the path of least resistance requires a mastery of restraint. faith is [Will] visions and voices this insubstantial pageant is peopled by competitive presences. my disease will forgive your cure. zapruder will rewind kennedy's brain back into his skull. brady's bill will be shot like columbine into the hands of a child covering her face. i can't remember the question, america, but she said yes. pills get rid of all of us, oversleeping dreamers, spindle stacked through a hole in the middle of my rewritable media. tangled in confusion, constructed moonlike out of emotion. we fall ultimately into simplicity from a past we used by habit. cut to conceive, misleading sharply into the mainline. such a shield is now necessary. the price paid same parts of the system sorted psychic stuff personas fashion out of people. It's nesting (hunting) nesting season, and the beasts carry diseases, wearing kevlar condoms for security reasons. god bless you america, and save your receipt. your credit isn't good here (i don't trust you trust me). you only preach to sheep. kill yourself and nothing else, america, suicide attempts are inherent in depressive illness may persist until remission occurs we will die like lambs together in order to minimize the risk of overdosage risperdal prescriptions should be written for the smallest quantity consistent with patient managemenT.
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Author's notes.
The sensibility of this poem is almost entirely Taoist. It's a this-affects-that argument that holds that "when this becomes good, that becomes bad." So, "you relax while I contract" is much like the inverse relationship to standards of excellence as opposed to failure, beauty to ugliness, and everything that is exalted on the one half, diminishing the other. This is a Derridean sensibility as well, but I didn't have Derrida when I wrote this poem. I had Taoism.
Two. The poem is a "confusion" of voices all of which have their own agendas popping out of a unified whole. The image I had in my mind when I wrote the poem: Possessed Linda Blair in the exorcist. There is no unified purpose, no single sentiment, no logic in the interpretation that one agency could produce all of these sentiments. They run over each other, interrupt each other, cancel each other out, and come to nothing. The tones of individual sentences are at points sentimental and clinical. The voice comes closer to its subject matter, and moves away. Who or what is the voice discussing? Children. What they must feel growing up in an environment where school shootings happen. And again, my feelings on how this happens and why it will continue to happen.
If you're going to write a prophecy, you can't write about yourself. Those are generally the rules of a prophecy. Self-mythology is an aspect of Blake, Hunter S. Thompson, and other notable writers who inspired my work, but it isn't an aspect of prophecies that are written by me.
I wrote about myself when I was young and interesting, but nowadays, I'm quite comfortable with my dogs, my partner, and our house. I'm currently watching Black Sails while I'm writing this blog post. Do you want me to write a poem about that? No? Okay. So, I focus on things that are more interesting, disturbing, and above all, important.
Ultimately, prophecies are recurring patterns that have been generalized to make a more profound point. They're not about me or you or them. They're always about us. If you know your bible, then you know that they ultimately aren't about hope. They explain why a society is being punished. They offer hope if they are so inclined, but they don't have to. I hoped that simply being aware of the pattern would be enough to stop it, but awareness is only the first step. And now I know what I didn't then, that it's almost like breaking an addiction. And it's hard work.
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This poem is problematic in a good way. It doesn't present you with a side. It presents you with voices. Some of the lines are taken off the warning labels of popular medications. To this day, I read this poem and am kind of shocked that I'm the one who wrote it. It's just a really good poem that I'm insanely proud to put my name on. So, if you ask me about this poem. I'll tell you that it is the best poem I ever wrote and explain how it was constructed.
As far as the meaning goes, breaking it apart and sorting through it is the meaning. That act is what makes it meaningful. If it's rejected, it's meaningful. If it's analyzed it's meaningful. If it's considered, it's meaningful. Hopefully, it will be ignored because it's not important. And thus it will, like Tennyson's Kraken, die on the surface.
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