Mistahsojourner - A Boy Coming To Terms

Sorry I can’t come to the phone right now 

I’m stuck at the precise moment 

where I realize 

she ain’t comin’ back 

when it hits me that it’s gonna be one of those days 

where somebody gonna tell you Job had it harder 

and that does as much for you 

as thoughts and prayers do 

when they’re pickin’ up the shell casings 

after somebody got done with one of those lives. 

Stuck at the exact moment 

I realize that maybe what I did 

is re-write a shitty U2 song. 

Please leave a detailed message after the tone 

and maybe I’ll call you back. 

Day started all chill and then all of a sudden everything was on fire. Had excitable bougie folk to the left and to the right of me. I’ll spare you the details. It’s really not important. 

I could pat myself on the back for surviving all that. I could say I’m tougher for having gone through it. Fuck that noise. I’m not. 

I’m just glad that it’s over for the moment. 

Tomorrow is the 4th of July. I’m just thankful for the day off of work. I don’t plan on celebrating. Fuck nationalism. The only thing I’ll really be celebrating is waking up and being aware of the fact that I’m not punching a clock. I’ve spent a lot of national holidays sitting at a desk in some ugly-ass, depressing office somewhere with a headset on waiting for phone calls. There is a tone in my ear and there is someone terribly surprised that someone is actually working. Some would even comment about how terrible it was that I was working on the 4th of July. 

God damn it. I spent way too long answering phones. I will forever be bitter about that. I’m never getting over that. 

My brain is fried. 

I don't think anybody but spam bots be following me but...

If you're real. Let me know.

I sit down and think that I want to write a bit. I turn on some music and notice that I’m not getting any sound. God damn it. What the fuck is going on? Check volume in Windows. Check that the right playback device is selected. Test playback device. Nothing. God damn it! I then realize that the TV my computer is plugged into has the sound turned all the way down. 

I’m angry today. 

Fuck CEOs. Fuck you if you are a CEO. 

Fuck the carceral state. 

Fuck The Supreme Court. 

Fuck Tucker Carlson. 

Fuck white nationalism. 

Fuck white supremacy. 

Fuck capitalism. 

Fuck Jeff Sessions. 

Fuck the War on Drugs. 

Fuck the lawyers who fix shit for rich motherfuckers who do bad shit. 

Fuck Goldman Sachs. 

Fuck Chase bank. 

Fuck Capital One. 

Fuck Netflix. 

Fuck the Democratic Party. 

Fuck the Republican Party. 

Fuck fascism. 

Fuck fascist superheroes. 

Fuck the state of Israel. 

Fuck SWAT teams. 

Fuck the NFL. 

Fuck the New England Patriots. 

Fuck Tom Brady. 

Fuck Robert Mueller. 

Fuck James Comey. 

Fuck the entire Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Fuck welfare reform. 

Fuck Bill Clinton for welfare reform. 

Fuck Bill O’Reilly. 

Fuck Paul Ryan. 

Aight. That went on long enough. 

I wrote nothing on Monday or Tuesday and that frankly is unacceptable. 

Are you still reading? I don’t really care if you are but it’s nice if you are. Thank you.  

Nothin’ in my head 

except the lies 

duct taped together 

that make the dream we live in breathe 

down our fuckin’ necks.

that breath is warm, sista or is it brotha?

smells like cheap perfume worn by Lady Liberty 

 after Elon Musk gave her a roofie 

then he went to the stars 

and forgave y’all’s sins 

but said hell no to stock options for all 

and tickets to the billionaire’s ball. 

Never alone 

got alphabetical men listenin’

to midnight confessions 

of dangerous love 

that will make them drink 

and die one of those deaths 

that ain’t quite official.

-----------------------------

You just kinda start. You see where things go and then you get stuck. That’s okay, I guess. 

I’m slipping a little. I feel laziness starting to grip me. I ain’t been as conscientious with this endeavor. I missed two days this week. I did not write a single word. Whatever. Like many a baby boomer says, it is what it is. I’m gonna pick up. I’m gonna continue. I’m gonna live on. I will survive. Aight. I’m gonna put on that song. The Cake version. 

I sit in this room that was my bedroom back in the day. I grew up in this room. I came to be in this room. I prayed in this room. I had my first orgasm in this room at the age of 16. I dreamed in this room. I woke up on summer days that were full of nothing but possibilities in this motherfucking room. I sat in the dark and listened to Art Bell in this room. I don’t have my own space anymore. I haven’t since some time in November, I think. I miss it. I’ve always felt like I didn’t belong anywhere. I don’t really have a space right now where I can just be. That’s traumatic, man. It really is. I express this and nobody really seems to give a fuck. 

Fuck. Fuck. Part of me thinks this shit is about on the same level as some angsty, hormonal teenager who is failing English and is brilliant but lazy according to themselves and who writes on a blog with a background that is as black as their nail polish.

I need to challenge myself. I’m not quite sure how though.

I finished reading two books this week. For a man that has been struggling with his attention span for years or at least feels like he has, that is an accomplishment. I finished the The Great Derangement by Matt Taibbi and The End of Policing by Alex Vitale. 

Taibbi is just an excellent writer with a good eye and a keen social conscience. He’s a minor hero of mine. I will pretty much read anything he writes. 

The End of Policing made me think a lot. I can’t say that it challenged me too much but it made me think about the why of a lot of things. In recent years, I’ve become really concerned about the militarization of police forces and the violence that more often than not victimizes the poor and people of color. It keeps me up at night. It makes me angry. It makes me want to give the finger to every cop I see. Blue Lives Matter flags make me fighting mad. I really cannot watch cop shows any longer because they play like insidious propaganda to me. The book is a bit dry but it’s quite readable. It is written by an activist academic who traces a lot of the problems heavy handed policing is thrown at to cruel austerity measures. If you’re reading this, you should read that book. I kinda wish everybody in this rotting empire would. Maybe some time soon I will write about some of the things I actually learned from the book. 

Get lost in the night’s machinery

with nothin’ to see but what there is to see

synthetic angel glow and Internet Protocol that never sleeps

Sick Dogs and Our Bad Conscience

I spent a bunch of time with a sick dog this weekend. I’ve known this dog since she was 8 months old and rowdy as hell. I really thought that she might die. I cried buckets. It looks like it isn’t this dog’s time though. As a result, my emotions are still pretty raw. I ain’t got tears to cry but I’ve still got plenty of feeling. 

Compassion that moves me to anger. Furious anger. Righteous anger. I don’t know what it is about the drive home from work that makes me think about all the big picture stuff. Big picture stuff? Shit. That’s so inadequate but I don’t know what else to call it. It’s burning anger about all the injustice that’s bigger than me. The injustice that happens while I watch a clock. It’s monstrous shit. It’s shit for The Hague. It’s shit that gets Meryl Streep Academy Awards for starring in fucking movies about it. It’s shit that grieves my fuckin’ spirit but at the end of the day doesn’t even really inconvenience me because of the accident of my birth. 

My country puts little brown children in concentration camps. They cry for their mommies and daddies. These facilities are often run for a profit and the guards go home, drink beer, watch the game on occasion and probably beat their wives and then promise to never ever do it again. They can do what they do and then they can go to Home Depot or Cabela’s and never give a second thought to what they are doing to earn a pay check. Banality of evil. They’re just doin’ their jobs. Maybe they’re all grim about it. Maybe they’re tormented. Maybe they lose sleep over it. I know some of ‘em enjoy it. They are having the time of their lives.

Yeah, immigration cops are bastards. It’s a popular thing in certain circles to say that all cops are bastards. I didn’t use to believe that but I’m starting to. I got a relative who is a deputy sheriff. I’ve watched him joke about running over protesters. I’ve seen his buddies mock African American Vernacular English. I’ve seen them drink a beer while rockin’ a Punisher skull on their chests. They’re bloodthirsty, suburban warrior fascists. They are the soldiers of this sad apocalypse. 

The enforcers of this shameful order are one thing but then there are the people on the sidelines. There are people who see the pictures of weeping children behind chain link fences and are thankful. They smile. They could not be happier. They are seein’ America become great again. They are seein’ people who are not like them suffer. They are watching a man who says the vile shit they say in their taverns and their country clubs in front of the whole nation proudly and without any shame at all. They got a man leading the country who has given permission for the demons that lurk inside them to run wild. 

I sit here at my desk and pound my keyboard and I got no idea what to do. I wish that I could tell you what to do. Tomorrow I’ll go back into work, the machine will grind on and I kinda hate myself because anything I might do or say is ineffectual in the face of this grave evil. 

Here’s what I’m going to do. It’s not much. All I can think to do right now at this moment is to tell you the truth as I see it. It is that bad. My country is engaged in a great evil. If there be a God and that God is just, he must punish us. I do not know if there is a god. I do know evil though. We’re seeing it. I don’t give a flying fuck about flags or anthems. I care about what’s true. 

God. Damn. It. 

I will never forgive the people who perpetrated these atrocities. As far as I am concerned, names like Trump, Miller, Sessions, Kelly and the whole Satanic cabal of them deserve to live in infamy. They should be hauled before a court and sentenced for crimes against humanity. 

What Happens

What happens is the machine 

goes through us 

too damn quick

til we got nothin’ but fun size Milky Way wrappers 

in a Halloween treat bag. 

-

What happens is sometimes you find yourself ponderin’ what hell is. 

It’s geographic region. 

The shit that goes down there. 

Always in the same ZIP code you’re in. 

It’s Monday eternally. 

That deep, polar bear cold you feel all over your body

never quits 

and everything you got to do to eat that day 

is gonna kill you. 

-

What happens is sometimes you live 

and you’re happy enough to (almost) thank god. 

Your walk has swagger to it.

Maybe the air that slowly kills you tastes sweeter. 

You think maybe it’ll all be okay 

till it all wears off like a crack hit. 

- 

What happens is life.