TH3 B3ST W4Y T0 N0T BVRN 0VT...

the best way to not burn out 
is to never consider 
stopping to think about it 

N0 S1GN H4S 4VTH0R1TY...

 

no sign has authority 
without men to enforce them; 
fuck your signs and your badges 

SONG OF THE DAY: Grey Winds

You might not be as woke as you think you are. Just woke enough to call everybody else toxic and retreat to your turtle shell of digital identity, while the real world continues to spin on a wobbly axis outside. At some point, real shit has to get done. People have to eat, and not be stuck out in the cold rain or snow. Some folks care more about cats than humans, but put forth this revolutionary persona. When shit starts falling apart (lol start… it’s already falling apart), you’re gonna have to be able to do shit you don’t wanna do with people you don’t wanna do it with. And you’re gonna have to know how to navigate that bullshit. I worry about how many dysfunctional people are culture has created, shit, perhaps including me.

P1LGR1M4G3S W1TH0VT KN0WN...

pilgrimages without known 
purpose, other than to more 
closely connect with each step 

SONG OF THE DAY: The Devil Put The Coal In The Ground

My new house backs up on a quarry company, and is I guess what was known as Walton's Mountain on the tv screen. John Boy's house is literally a quarter mile from here. I can walk up there at night when the moon is too bright and yell GOOD NIGHT JOHN BOY! GOOD NIGHT JOHN BOY! And the cool thing is it's a small town, too small for cops, so only the county cops are likely to come, and they're most likely busy being corrupt with the local drug trades, which they've long been corrupted by. Anyways, I was walking back in the woods to the gulch behind the house, contemplating where property lines may or may not end, and how far I can ignore that to put up some goat fencing, and I discovered a trash pile, probably from the lady who used to live here, who apparently lost the house while she was renting to own because she got popped for two DUIs in two weeks a couple years back, the second of which just straight up going on the wrong side of a four lane highway with giant median strips in the middle of each direction, like those big ass median strips where trees grow and deer live in there and you could probably put up a pallet house if you wanted. I'm guessing maybe during those times she must've started throwing trash down the hill. Strangely this is a country phenomenon with quite a bit of history, where Appalachia meets the South, and them po buckras came to be an underclass that nobody has love for. There's something amazing about having trash and living on the side of an incline and deciding to just throw your trash over the side because fuck it. Of course, po buckra white folks are more earth-based white people, but that same trash tossing down the hill is basically Reaganomics and what the white elite practice as well. They're just not considered po buckra pieces of shit because they wear suits and are Senators and are well-trained in the stealth abstraction of their dirty deeds which has always defined the American Empire's wealth, laundering morality through a complex pyramid scheme where you slap your shitty world philosophies into the bottom and somehow freedom comes out the top.

I guess I'll clean that trash pile up at some point in the next month or two, because it's going to annoy me if I don't. But I also might put goats back there first and see how much of it they eat. I'm gonna see if I can get them to start carrying halal goat up at Ike Godsey's store too.

P4TR10T1C F3RV0RS P0K3D...

patriotic fervors poked 
and prodded through pride and fear; 
dirt recognizes no flag 

SVNFL0W3R M1ND ST4T3 R0VND3D...

sunflower mind state rounded 
up by glyphosate-happy 
civilization gone wild 

SONG OF THE DAY: Sappy

Another sad happy day in the decline of the American Empire, which is not really American so much as United Statesian, as the land masses of the Americas existed long before these dysfunctional divided states were united in declarations of independence not only from Old World parents, but this world’s existent peoples. Shit man, the Americas existed before “America” got applied, which is why I try to use Turtle Island, but that also feels awkward and quite white yoga community-esque of a term. Nonetheless, there’s sad happy feelings as the mirage that’s been beamed into all our heads continues to disintegrate, and it’s not that we’re all really in any worse danger than we ever were before so much as our ideas of what is real are being punctured by what is actually real. The social contract has always been abandoned for large parts of our society, and those at the top of the pyramid scheme are just widening how many they abandon the social contract for. That’s why Law And Order cries go out, and the gun-loving truck with American flag flying types have been commandeered to not be outlaws but to be co-signee’s of the police state. Forty years of Reaganomical sounds good but makes no sense policies plus thirty years of sterile Nashville propaganda country beaming straight into every brain wandering the Wal-Mart Super Center for more cheap new shit to replace last summer’s cheap new shit (which already broke) has created a mindless class with the stiffest of spines – spines like an AR-15’s handguard keeping the heart from getting burned by the poison of rhetoric implanted into brain. Heart essentially muzzled, dehumanizing the Earth into with us or against us. Can’t even say love it or leave it anymore, because the borders are closed, even for exit. The next six months will see shit we were taught was the ultimate governmental model on Earth fall apart as quickly as an old Sears Roebuck two-over-two house that wasn’t maintained for half a century. Our perceived norms will decay back into the ground.

And yet, once you get past the fear of this, you realize that’s always been the case. We’ve never been any safer than everybody’s mutual belief in a social contract. And that social contract can still exist, in our own smaller communities, without the legitimacy of a constitutional government. Those social contracts have always existed all along, despite the government, sometimes in accord with our laws, but often times outside of those laws as well. Being legal doesn’t mean being right. And a government that doesn’t honor common decency of social contracts isn’t a legitimate government anyways, regardless of whether you get to vote for it or not.
Many of us have been in shitty relationships which we become dependent upon, because it’s all we know. We get no happiness from it, no support, and basically just keep continuing along in these shitty relationships because it’s what we’ve become used to, and all we know. And sometimes they still fall apart, and there’s a panic and freak out about it ending, beating our own selves on the head, unable to imagine an existence without this shitty relationship that doesn’t give us happiness. And it hurts, even though we hate how we feel already.
But as we get further away from it, and our emotions settle, and if we survive the suicidal periods in the immediate aftermath when the violent spasms of reaction are the strongest, we realize we are better off, and there’s a chance to find actual happiness in life. A chance for real liberty, not just pretend forced obedience to the public school social studies lessons liberty. That’s the sad happy I feel right now as we stand here in the final run-up to an election that is more theater than choice. Things are falling apart. But they were never all that solid to begin with, and most of us ain’t been happy anyways. So let’s stop telling ourselves it’s gonna get better, that it’s all going to change this time. It’s sad to have all that you thought was true turn out to be a goddamned lie, but there’s a happiness in it too, because you can stop lying to yourself as well. And that’s a heavy burden to always keep telling yourself that some bullshit you know in your heart to be a lie is reality and pure truth.

W33D P30PL3, 4LW4YS W4RN3D TH4T...

weed people, always warned that 
we are trespassing upon 
prosperity’s perfection 

TH3 M4J0R1TY 0F VS...

the majority of us 

misfit the algorithm's 

credit scale software - outcasts 

TH3 SH4P3D 3DG3S 0F C0MF0RT...

the shaped edges of comfort 
still cut into the skyline - 
unattainable contours  

1NDVSTR14L C4RC4SS3S...

industrial carcasses

litter the wastelandscape; we

scribble our prayers on them

0LD W4YS 0F C4P1T4L W3R3...

old ways of capital were 

crooked too, but sown with less 

massive demented method 

SONG OF THE DAY: Knocking On Your Screen Door

I've got a screen door that slams real good at my new place, the tension spring pulling that bama hard on a screened in porch where I got a weight bench and old rug for wiping feet and taking off shoes before coming in the house. The other day my mail lady dropped off a package and I knew she did because the screen door slammed and by the time I got from the other side of the house to where she'd left the package of B.B. King 45s on the foot wiping rug, she was in her car already, so I yelled "THANKS!" and she bip-bipped the horn in friendly acknowledgement as she backed out the driveway, and the soothing slam of screen doors in an old country house which ain't perfect but neither am I, it all feels just about right.

C0MMVN4L H0M3S 0F PR4Y3R...

 

communal homes of prayer 
have become abandoned for 
big box store salvation chores 

3C0N0M1C 4BSTR4CT10NS...

economic abstractions

shape views of reality,

to where our dreams remain leashed

TH3 3NV3L0P1NG D4RKN3SS...

 

the enveloping darkness

is not the entire picture;

fear's developed by design

THR0W1NG CHVNKS 0F RVBBL3 THR0VGH...

throwing chunks of rubble through

the facade, just to sneak a

peek at natural sunlight

4ND Y3T H3R3 W3 4R3 - C0CKSVR3...

and yet here we are - cocksure

of our own self-righteousness,

while fences grow tall and close

TH3 0RD3R W3'V3 CR34T3D...

the order we've created

wasn't supposed to be a

prison instead of progress

SONG OF THE DAY: Qualified

I am highly qualified to sit around listening to the river, or waiting for a train to pass in the middle of nowhere, probably passing a little time by walking a few miles, snagging a few cool railroad spikes laying around, but then my cargo shorts pocket got too heavy so I throw them back out, and then sit down again. Lot of cool rocks for sitting around on out here on this planet. I saw some shit where they said there’s probably life on other planets nearby. Hahaha, could you imagine being so self-important that you thought there wasn’t life on other planets? Like you just think, “well I’m the most special shit that just happened to come together in the universe, and there couldn’t possibly be anything like me. In fact, whatever created everything probably created ME to be like HIM.” Haha, it’s some foolish people out here thinking CRAZY SHIT to hype themselves up. Sit down by the river for a little while, and listen to a real player spit game.

SONG OF THE DAY: Hey Nineteen Miles Per Hour

I’ve been on a mission lately to listen to far more 7-inch 45s on 33 rpm speed, sometimes even bumping the pitch shifter that extra 10% too. You can’t slow it down enough sometimes. Actually all the time. The real world’s regular speed is fucking stupid. Nobody needs to be rushing around all the goddamned time, or wearing watches, or having their phones blip bloop at them angrily because your physical presence hasn’t navigated the complex obstacle course of pata-modern life fast enough to be at some fucking bullshit ass GPS coordinates at some entirely arbitrary time. Fuck clocks, fuck appointments, and fuck rushing around. Slow everything down, to a crawl. In fact fuck it, I’m gonna start going on crawls, literally crawling down the sidewalk just to get a better feel for certain parts of town.

FR0M PH4RM T0 4BL3 - DVLL1NG...

from pharm to able - dulling

our overwhelmed senses to

avoid tearing it all down

SONG OF THE DAY: Moms

Thought about making some comments but then decided to make no comments. Just jam Bambu. Looking forward to him dropping another album at some point.

N3VR4L 1MPVLS3S ST1FL3D...

neural impulses stifled

in our own minds; meanwhile, the

wild keeps reaching for the stars

M4NM4D3 ST41RW4YS D0N'T G3T T0...

manmade stairways don't get to

heaven; bodies are anchors

tethered to humanity

SONG OF THE DAY: Mafatshe Leh

I know it’s a pandemic still but I’m bored, so I bought a bus ticket to Cairo, the long way, through the deep South then through Texas down on the Gulf side of Mexico all the way to Panama, where a ramp is set up and the bus does a big jump over the Panama Canal, which will have four trash barges set on fire as we do the jump, and then in Colombia, where we recreate the Herzog epic Fitzcarraldo, complete with Klaus Kinski’s son Nikolai playing his father’s role at the front of the bus (which we’re pretending is our steamship), then down all the way to Chile, where we cut across to Montevideo, Uruguay, to park on a steam ship and sail over to South Africa, then continue the bus journey up through the interior of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, on well-rutted roads, with a brief layover in Lubumbashi (go TP Mazembe!), working our way to catching a steamer way up river on the Congo, where we float to Kinshasa, before cutting our way northward up through the Central African Republic’s jungles, then South Sudan, entering the Saharan zone of the lower Nile in Sudan, on up into Egypt and eventually landing in Cairo. So I won’t be reachable by email through next Thursday, sorry.

R41NB0WS B0RN FR0M TH3 D4RKN3SS...

rainbows born from the darkness -

small fractals of light which get

expanded into wide spectrum

SONG OF THE DAY: I'm Lost

One is only lost when they’re holding themselves to a trajectory that may not be destined for them. Panning further out of the map’s drawn onto your life, that you’ve come to accept as your defining reality, allows the path to meander more in the ways the universe might have planned for it. I’ve been thinking a lot about English gardens lately, and how they’ve corrupted our view of nature, that we can control it and whip it into a nice, orderly shape, that’s unnatural in nature, and also requires a lot of work. This also came in vogue during a time when English culture was dominating the Earth, and could subjugate enough other folks to do all the necessary dirty work to maintain those impossibly unnatural but perfectly humane gardens. In the idea of living with nature, we’ve lost sight of the “with” part, thinking nature has to bend to our human will. Shit’s gonna grow the way it wants to, without asking us. We can tend things so that they’re being heard, and grow in directions sort of beneficial to ourselves as well as them. Or we can keep applying these colonial control mentalities all over everything, and try to pound it all to where we want it, yelling “Dominion! Over! The! Earth! Dominion! Over! The! Earth!” while we beat on it. If we can’t live with nature, mutually, it leaves us, or stops paying attention to us, or worse yet still sits there acting like it’s listening to us and caring still, but it’s not – it’s secretly plotting how to poison us while we’re not looking, slipping arsenic into our slave corn, or some shit like that.

I feel like I could use more pilgrimages nowhere, on foot, just meandering ass seven to twelve mile loops through nothing in particular, to better connect with each step, and see the ditches and trees and cracks in the asphalt way better. I tend not to see them too well zipping through a productive industrial modern American life all that much. And this fucked up late capitalist American life is just the bastard child of English gardens anyways.

TH3 PR3C4R1TY 0F L1F3...

the precarity of life

easily overlooked when

world's filtered through net bubbles

SONG OF THE DAY: Curtain Call

Just moved into a house, bigger than the basement apartment, and there’s no curtains. I don’t have a brain that’s ever thought about curtains beyond “I guess we tack an old sheet up” but I don’t have this many old sheets. Trying to be normal is weird as fuck. I also realized my class transition in terms of Adidas tracksuits. Most of my life I was poor, so had no Adidas track suits. You didn’t even bother thinking about shit like that after a couple back to school shopping trips where the name brand shit you wanted was secretly replaced with bo-bo shit that you had to work pretty hard to freshen up. Sometimes (like me) you gave up on freshening up and just assumed a derelict look out of ease. But you learned to scour the thrift store racks for them Adidas garments, and eventually built a little arsenal you could mix and match to a semi-decent freshness.

In recent years, I got to the point I actually bought a couple of nobody-else-ever-wore Adidas garments, but always at outlet stores on their downward spiral through the consumer ranks. And even then, that shit had to be on the clearance rack usually, because the full outlet store price was still too high for my barely treading water allegedly middle class ass with no safety net. Sometimes the purchase of Adidas basketball shorts that nobody else ever wore would trick me into thinking I was more than just barely middle class, and when I’d go into a store with the kids to gawk at shit we couldn’t buy, I’d see the Adidas over there in the men’s athleisure world corner, and think, “wow, look at that orange track suit… how obnoxious. I should buy it.” But then I go over there and that shit’s like over $140 for the pants and jacket? Fuck that shit. I ain’t no goddamn Rockefeller. And that’s why I’m wearing black Adidas basketball shorts with white stripes and a clearance sale Scotland GK jersey, orange as fuck with black stripes, right now, looking fresh as shit, all by myself, nowhere.

BLV3 L1V3S M4TT3R DVMB4SS3S...

"blue lives matter" dumbasses

pretending that they're outlaws

by licking the boots that tread

SONG OF THE DAY: PU$$Y Fairy (OTW)

I know Wet Ass Pussy got the manufactured discourse going full bore there for a quick minute, but you take away the video and that song was kinda boring in my opinion. And it’s not like there hadn’t been vulgar female rappers throughout the south in abundance before this song; I think it just was a faux shock to conservative types who love to be upset by everything who hadn’t listened to Gangsta Boo or Trina or La Chat before, much less the older shit by like Millie Jackson, or really throughout the history of music.

Anyways, WAP isn’t even the best sex positive from female perspective pop song of 2020. That goes to Jhene Aiko. This song makes me cut on the purple christmas lights, light some jasmine incense, and slip into my burgundy silk boxers every time I hear it.

SONG OF THE DAY: H8

I climbed the highest mountain within seven crow flights, seeking answers to questions that hadn’t even yet formed coherently in my soul, trudging to the top through blackberry bush thickets as wide as a European football field, carefully treading across slick granite stones larger than my family’s entire existence, having to remove my worn boots at times to utilize the extra precise grip of bare foot against raw stone, finally getting to the top, where the old wizened figure sat in pentagram position, in rhinestone overalls and large flowing grey beard wisping off like smoke into the clouds. I contemplated upon my timid approach how to frame my question which had been fermenting in my heart since birth, though the words have never been clear, a basic innate searching or yearning that has existed inside me perhaps even pre-dating English words, I don’t know, maybe that’s why I can’t figure out how to ask it. I made my final approach, and the old person – I guessed a man because of the beard but they were entirely effeminate as well, so I can’t say for certain about any gender specifics, as there seemed to be some pretty dope breasts trying to peek out from around those glittering overalls – the old person said, “There is a question eating at you, but my statement will only poke that question with deeper questions that will be easier for you to answer.” I said, “cool” like a fucking dumbass because I was simultaneously in spiritual awe but also wondering what the old figure’s nipples were like, and whether they had cursive tattoos on their chest. The old sage, still smooth in the face as if river waters had rippled over it for centuries, said, “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” This confused me. I was trying to escape the manufactured discourse, the engineered divisions which push us all to the brink of violence against each other on a daily basis. This is not what I expected.

“Does that mean… should I get some guns then?” Was it time to prepare for the darkest futures, the delusions the most evil amongst us have been wishing for decades? Uncivil wars among each other, for the scraps of the American empire’s diminishing returns?

The old sage opened their eyes, and looked at me. Their eyes were the color of rose quartz, with a comforting gaze, like staring into your father’s mother’s eyes and your mother’s father’s eyes at the same time, as a baby, adrift into this Earthen existence but with the protective gaze of elders who knew more about the maelstrom you’d been launched into than your own folks did. “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people. Think about it.”

I thought about it, but I hadn’t expected a pop quiz, and was struggling with the anxiety of being impressive to weirdly sensual old spiritual figures at the top of unrealistic mountain ranges. “I don’t get it. Why guns? Should I start having guns again? Because my uncle killed himself a long time back, and it’s always kinda made me not want to have guns because of my own depressive episodes. Plus, my kids…”

“Settle down,” said the old spirit. “This has nothing to do with guns. People kill people, so beware people. People with guns kill people more efficiently than ungunned people. They have combined the mad philosophies of human beings with the mechanical actions of industry. Get the fuck away from those people. Wherever there’s a bunch of them, get the fuck away. Even if you have to jump over fences, both physical and unseen, some even mandated by constitutions. Get the fuck away.”

So I’ve been trying ever since. But it’s only been a few minutes. I think.

4 N3W C04T 0F BLV3 P41NT 41N'T...

a new coat of blue paint ain't

gonna fix a foundation

rotted out, from the top down

SONG OF THE DAY: Walkin' Up the Road

A good exercise is seeing how slow you can walk down a country road, by that guardrail just above the creek near where the railroad tracks crosses over on that old fucked up concrete bridge where all the concrete is falling off the rebar, and it’s probably not safe but nobody’s going to fix it because the state doesn’t care nor does the railroad company. But that spot is so dope because nobody cares, and the kudzu is creeping up along the guardrail and mostly goes under it but at a few spots, bold ass kudzu vines are like, “Fuck it, I’m going over the top” so it does, like an ocean wave cresting in whitecap. I love to walk through there, really slow, I mean super fucking slow, so that the kudzu thinks it can catch me where the kudzu is bold and goes overtop the guardrail. And I’m walking, super slow motion slow, and the kudzu is like “oh shit, we’re gonna grow onto this dude, let’s do it!” And the kudzu takes a shot at it, but I’m just barely walking too fast for it to catch my shoulder. And then it’s reached too far over the guardrail, almost to the road, so somebody complains and they come and spray shit on it or cut it or whatever the state does when people complain and they have paperwork to fill out to pretend they give a fuck.

I hope one day in our next era of existence which is negatively called “post-Apocalyptic” but I prefer to call pre-re-genesis, to have a giant herd of goats, and I slowly walk them down the road to the kudzu, and I just sit there writing poetry while they eat up kudzu, and whatever pre-re-genesis state has replaced the failed one we currently lives in cuts me vouchers by the acre of cleared kudzu, which I trade for psychedelics, and whole chickens, and hopefully one day some 100-spoke gold Daytons for my riding mower.

I don’t actually have a riding mower, but the rest of this is all too real.

4M3R1C4 1TS3LF FVCK3D...

America itself fucked

around for far too long; we

have, collectively, found out

TH3 B4RB3D W1R3 1S CL0S1NG 1N...

the barbed wire is closing in;

blue skies are further away;

clouds accumulate data

CH4NC3S T0 3SC4P3 DW1NDL1NG...

chances to escape dwindling

as police-state compadres

patrol all maliciously

1N TH1S D0M3ST1C4T3D...

in this domesticated

life, the butcher's blade always

lurks just off screen, to the right

R3TVRN1NG T0 S1MPL3R T1M3S...

returning to simpler times

has gotten complicated

by the financial bear traps

SONG OF THE DAY: You Can't Rock and Roll (In A Council Flat)

The worst part of living in places you don’t own is people telling you what you can and can’t do. Of course, even folks who “own” houses are paying mortgages, and actually the bank owns it, who will also tell you shit you can and can’t do. For all the freedom we’ve got, we ain’t got much freedom. Fuck it, I’m going to the river. MAYBE FOREVER!

DR4M4 M4NVF4CTVR1NG...

drama manufacturing

remains a steep mountain chart

of unsustainable growth

RVST N3V3R SL33PS; C0RRVPT10N...

rust never sleeps; corruption

never corrects itself; I'm

just trying to live my life

SONG OF THE DAY: Family Pain

One of the most formative nights of my life happened in the summer of 1989, after drinking with some fellow delinquents on the outskirts of Keysville, I got bored with the other folks, and rather than wait to catch a ride with my boy, decided to hitchhike. I stood by the train tracks for a few minutes, and a beat-up Cadillac Eldorado pulled up beside me, probably was lime green at one point but time had faded it to an off-mint color. Jimmy Valiant was driving, and Swamp Dogg was in the passenger seat. The windows were down, and he reached behind him to open the back door, and said, “Get in, boy.”

The ten miles from Keysville, onto 15 south, towards where I lived, went fast. They didn’t talk to me really, outside of an occasional question when Swamp Dogg would spin around and ask me something very specific. Mostly they just jabbered at each other about the radio, which was blasting. On the pull-off by Abilene Road, which ran along the train tracks, they pulled over. I wasn’t sure why, and to be honest, back then I was a little nervous. I had wondered if I should make a run for it, because even they seemed a little too wild, even by my teenage dirtgod standards. Nobody had even asked me where I lived, or was going. Swamp Dogg just said to get in the car and I did and they took off. But Jimmy Valiant got out at the pull off and went off to the edge of the woods to piss, car still running, radio blasting, not a care in the world.

Swamp Dogg spun around at that point and asked most of what he asked. “What was you doing up there, boy?” I didn’t know. “You know some folks got murdered last week by a hitchhiker closer to Drake’s Branch. You lucky the police didn’t see you before we did.” I didn’t know. “You know how to play a Hammond organ, boy?” I didn’t know. “What do you know, boy?” I didn’t know.

Jimmy Valiant was back in the driver’s seat in a swoop, and we were off again, 85 on that straight stretch where my dad blew the transmission out of a Camaro he wasted money on for drag racing that lasted two street races. In a flash we were near my road, which didn’t have names back then, just numbers. Nobody got names until 911 mapped out the countryside. We got closer and I said, “Hey,” so I could let them know to drop me off at the end of the road, but they couldn’t hear me over the music and them babbling at each other about Hammond organs and royal flushes and the Sunday morning meal at the jail in Henderson, North Carolina. “Hey!” I said louder, nervous as fuck, when they got close to my road I leaned forward, grabbing the bench seat’s back, saying “Y’all can drop me off at the end of this road.” Jimmy Valiant barely touched the brakes as he fishtailed onto 634. Swamp Dogg laughed, and looked over his shoulder. “This ain’t where you live, boy.”

500 feet later, Valiant slammed the brakes, leaving two basketball goals’ length of black mark on the asphalt, slapped in in R, and slid into the driveway of the trailer my dad lived at back then, and I stayed at half the time. Usually I stayed at whichever parent’s house had the least oversight, which was tough because neither one of them paid all that much attention. Valiant hit the brakes again, sliding on the gravel, and before we even were to a complete stop, Swamp Dogg reach back over the seat and popped open my door again. Jimmy Valiant looked back and said, “Tell Tuna we said ‘hey’”.

I stammered an uh okay, got out, and soon as my feet were on the gravel, they were gone. Literally gone, no engine roar, no sign of them, just me standing in the driveway by my dad’s trailer. I walked up and the door was chained shut, which meant he was fucking this woman he was seeing at the time. The music was playing loud as fuck too, same shit that was in the Cadillac Eldorado. I contemplated banging on the door but I didn’t wanna interrupt his vibe, so I walked the mile down the road in the darkness, half drunk and the other half doomed, to my mom’s house. When I got to where I could but through the woods between two trailers, closer to my mom’s house on the backside, but far enough from both of the trailers nobody would shoot at me by accident, I did. Moving slow at first once I got in the scrub woods, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness that was my environment, and then I found my way. Somehow, I found my fuckin’ way.

SONG OF THE DAY: Losing Boy

Some of y’all have never been losers your whole life, and it shows. You think normal shit like voting is magic and will somehow stop the spread of fascism, or the proud ignorance of jacked-up trucks full of blank-eyed young men fed too many 8chan memes during adolescent development, flying giant flags not of a country (though sometimes) but of a person, or weird fucked up fringe things, gawking at the world with dehumanizing glare, ready to “own the libs” by trampling on decency. Some of y’all are basic ass normal folks too used to having reliable housing and cupboards stocked full of food or being able to go to a store for something you might be missing, and feel like the system somehow corrects itself and is actually good at its heart, just been corrupted by some aberrations. Y’all think American democracy is a Santa Claus that’s just gonna show up in November and unwrap some freedom restored.

I’m very thankful sometimes for having been a natural born loser, because it makes not believe dumb shit like that. It also makes me know the end of the world is never the end of the world. Losers don’t get an end to the world, there is no climactic apocalypse for true-born losers. You just keep losing, in different more creative ways, and scratch out small wins here and there. To be a loser is a purgatory of figuring shit out, and in the best of times when you’ve figured it out, you’re still anxious as fuck because you know how quickly it can all fall apart. Y’all “last free election” dramatic motherfuckers should’ve been paying attention years ago. Shit, I wish there was an end of the world sometimes. But there ain’t. You just keep slogging through the bullshit, and try not to drown. Not even sure why you try to avoid drowning, to be honest. Doesn’t seem to be some big payoff anywhere on the horizon. But to be a born loser means you always gotta gamble, that somehow someway you’ll win one day. Blind faith in “fuck it” is all a loser has half the time.

SH0VLD'VE G0TT3N MY P4SSP0RT...

should've gotten my passport

stamped last year; no late passes

issued for those trapped inside