Everybody needs
their friend
Everybody needs
their answer
Everybody needs
something like love
Now the waters fall
Now the dragons curl
their long scaly tails
whose fault is it?
Is it mine?
Why does everyone
point to me?
Are they right?
I thought I didn’t exist anyway
I thought I wasn’t there anyhow
How can a not-there make trouble?
What are they talking about?
Is there an idea
is there a soundtrack
Is there a path
Is there a good idea
Is there anything besides me
turning circles like a trained monkey
a capuchin I think
The ones with the black caps sketched in dark fur atop their poor empty little heads
because these monkeys grinding these organs — they don’t know shit
Anyway
leaving the capped capuchins to one side,
and begging your forgiveness,
I begin to climb down the stairs
and I think as I reach the bottom
I start to notice something like
fall leaves crinkled in themselves
falling carefully sliding back and forth on the wind
on their way to underfoot
Is this my fault?
It seems to be
It feels to be
squarely on my head
What would you have me do?
What could I only do?
What should I carefully find?
What?
Pieces on the floor
gonna leave them lying there
Pieces of us and what I thought
we would be
gonna leave them there to rot
Pieces on the floor
I’m the wrong
You’re all kinds of gone
Pieces on the floor
I’m tired lonely bored
doesn’t make a difference
Pieces on the floor
I got the faith
But I need a plot, some characters, a tie-in
I got the faith
But I need a sense of where we go now
Tell me and I’ll follow
Tell me and I’ll try with everything
I only got
I got the faith
But I need the structure and a few starting point details
I got the faith
But I need a little help here
Tell me and I’ll believe
Guide me and I’ll compose this symphony
Help me and I’ll do my level best
Where are we now?
I got the faith
A book of his evil.
It’s not slander.
Just a gentle call to his heart and mind
that they might remember his soul in kind.
It’s not a rambling.
But a careful song to bring him home again.
Why he has he done these things?
And how has he spun this web of lies
within which he catches his own wings
within whose sticky threads he hides
his own deeper heart and wiser mind
?
How has he turned away from an active
search for God’s churning fire
that his own gear works might conspire
to spin him out in linked cadence
with the Love that has made us
all
everyone
in Its image
bright as sun
kind beyond limits
?
He travels the wide paths
on a wooden horse whose belly holds sneak attacks
He fights for the Lord but the Lord shares his prejudices
He fights for the Good but the Good’s not what he alleges
I’m sorry I cannot be a rudder to his hull
I’m sorry I cannot be an anchor ‘gainst the pull
of every ancient nick and tear
strange wounds his chest must bear
strange tales his heart must tell
in the cage where spring feeds the well
He’s better than me in his person
He moves with more discipline and less sin
He’s wiser than me in his habits
Why should he harken my yaps yips?
But this is crime this lie
A crime deep and wide enough to swallow a nation
to loose a people from the prize
sovereign over their own fate they alone say when
a leader steps aside
and another gives it a try
Unless he win
and we lose
He will realize that he is we
but
too late
To twist the constitution
into sleazy scissors for to cut out
those parts that comprise the heart
of a government by for and of the people
So evil
so bleak
so cynical
such nihilism
in the name of God’s grand plan
A forced faith is no faith at all
The end of people-rule for the sake of forced faith
is a crime against God and man
I need a cigarette
or three
I need a bottle of wine
you’ll see
Give me that and I’ll be fine
not just for the moment
but for all the moments to come
and not only that but even more
Give me music videos and wine
And I promise I will slip to the sublime
I’ll stay there I’ll pray there
I’ll be a saint today and later
an angel in heaven’s host
I just need another toast
with cheese and an eighty’s hit
yes please I’m sure that’s exactly it
the piece I’ve been missing
The nails are bent in, too garbled for kissing
but if I could just drink past my gut
why then I should slink into what
is love and Love is God and wife
is everything whole, sweet and nice
oh yes I’m sure
Just a little something
all answers to learn
and the bells of heaven to ring
that’s why I so much yearn
for a drink
not for my own sake
but just to think
past my own model and make
beyond myself
this time it’s bound to work!
if not, then, well
I’ll lower the glass, stand with a jerk
and march right out that door
into the open air the sprawling moor
into freedom
yes I swear
even if I here falter
I will surely tear
myself from the alter
of creature comfort
and ego tripping
I’ll move past dumb hurt
And prides-on-shames slippings
you’ll see
Author: Glug Glug
Editor: What Tut
Production staff: Bartleby “the pouting whale” Willard & Amble “drunk on tainted loves” Whistletown
Copryight: Andy “I haven’t existed in years and years!” Watson
What can we do that’s any good?
What’s the poetry that halts this evil?
What’s the song that mirrors them to themselves
In time
Lest they sin against God and man
As they must if cast they do their votes for crime
Praying beseeching the God of violence
To pulverize their estranged brothers and sisters
Into a soft and mealy pulp with no bounce to oppose block or dodge
their righteous fists
What perfect essay
What surgically precise and spiritually explosive
Advertisement for the gentler wiser way
Might we perform
To save them from themselves
Lest they
bow Cain to jeer piddle shit upon poor Able
Supposed to be their brother
Supposed to be cosigner and joint administrator and heir
Of the fertile meadows, deep forests, sprawling homestead, meandering river, silverware and crockery
If they so continue
Their immortal souls will surely suffer
If they so waltz on
They’ll join the fools the rabid dogs they spittle-spilling hyenas
They’ll quaking shake at the gates of Hell
To learn
From God always mild as a summer breeze
how they were
what they did
how they cut
the bellies of their brothers sisters and own howling selves
how they
Exulted in fantasies, bunching scrunching mutilating and otherwise forcing Reality
(so infinite clear true and kind)
to fit their wildest conspiracy theories (doggedly contemptuous of truth, reason, clarity, and the gentle Truth that guides these careful, soul-respecting arts)
Not content with a reality of madcap lies
They needed to knead the soul of things
up into their bundle of desperate perversions —
false, hollow, cruelly proud, and maniacally certain tales
of God, self, other,
and all the gears and levers
connecting us to our little times and larger timelesses.
Where is the miracle?
A poetry so pure
So fair and just
To gently their souls stir
‘Til catch they must
Themselves in the act
Of hacking the cords
That keep the monsters back
The boring old demon hoards
Of might makes right
Of “true” and “false” as weapons
Of power held through fright
A government incompetent
For governing’s not really the goal
When rulers break the people’s hold
On their shared nation
How to show them themselves?
Sharing’s become such a pain
They’ll trade a momentary spell
of pushing our faces in the mud
for their future and their children’s too
Anything, anything to tell us screw you screw you fuck you you losers you
I’m out of breath
I’m out of ideas
I’m out my depth
My mind’s a freeze
Of too much root beer float
Gulped in a mindless rush
As crinkle-crisp leaves wrote
Scathing symphonies so lush
Rich in imagery, those limpid tunes
Full of counterpoint and musical irony
Leaves scratching invisible sound-wounds
Upon cement road’s rough conformity
I’m panting and feeling dumb
Around the climbing tree I swung
For minutes out of time I flung
My fool self around the hallowed trunk
To think to feel to move past this clunk
This empty sordid boring hatful junk
I wanted to help
In a way that wasn’t mean
I hear them as they yelp
Roving in packs to strip clean
Our bones and our dreams
Which they say are but schemes
And perverse acts child sacrifice
Drunken orgies to the gods of vice
What went wrong?
It got stressful.
We stopped talking it out
The myths grew on and on
And the truth got lost in shouts
About who sullied the song
We used to share
Who first it was that quit the love
Who first no longer cares
And who has failed our God above
And what rules God commands
And what rules are just the other side’s demands
Now what?
Tired
Too tired
Can’t think
No ideas
Out of my depths
Drowning in this riddle
That my time and place have posed
Like a drunk face down in his own spittle
He was trying to go beyond the boasts
That clinking glasses drew from boisterous youth
But now he wakens to a nauseous earthy hollow disappointing truth
Author: BW/AW
Editor: AW/BW
Copyright: Andy Watson
You know what?
Donald Trump worked against democratic norms, rules, institutions, and balances of power in his presidency.
Then in 2020 he spent months trying to lie and cheat the American people out of their sovereign decision in the 2020 presidential election.
Then we had these four years for the country to say that that behavior is not Okay.
And the GOP took that time to not repudiate Donald Trump’s actions, but to at every level bow to him, excuse and/or echo his crimes.
What you GOP have done is say, “Oh, exchange democracy for a system in which the president is a dictator who uses law to perform crimes against the law and the citizens of the nation?? Hmmmm, well, and we’d get to win and shove the democrats faces into the dirt, make them bleed a little or maybe even a lot — not sure how much, guess we’ll all find out together — ? Hmmmm. You know what: Okay, sure! I’m in!”
That’s what you’ve done.
How is that not a knife in my gut?
How is that not a crime against both of us and against the human spirit?
How is that not a crime against God and man?
It is.
It very much is.
What am I to do?
What am I to do with what you have done?
You’ve lined up with political evil.
What is the logical result of your submission to political evil?
If you win, political crime’s primed and ready to go: a government turned against its own citizens, using the tools of law to suppress freedom, justice, and competency in the name of “I WIN FOREVER, SUCKERS!”
What you are doing is agreeing to crime, to evil.
What am I to do?
You have hurt me so much.
Now we gently stop you, or you cruelly oppress first us, and then yourselves.
Because once you put crime in charge, crime and nothing and no one else, is in charge.
Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AM Watson
A wife floats in on butterfly wings
A loving family parachutes to the ground
A vocation’s carried by elephant caravan
And dancing deer share insights profound
Her dew-wet wings enfold your nakedness
Their well-placed faith restores your own
Its clear necessity: a blessedness
Their prancing speaks like God on the phone
It’s great how all now falls right into place
Even Michael Johnson apologizes
for lies about the presidential race!
All’s well, and everyone wises up
Because your wife finally floated in
on beautiful gossamer butterfly wings.
Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copryright: AMW
They are so wrong.
Whose madness exceeds whose?
They are so wrong; doesn’t make him so right.
Oh the project so vital
Except the project is a waste
And without the project he’s a ghost
For there was only ever this work
And now the work seems like noise
And all he ever does is waste
time energy effort passion
The project is done
But without the project, there’s nothing
that matters, nothing that counts
It’s been lonely, but there was a purpose
It’s gotten grim, but there was a solace
It’s worn boring, but there was a point
Now it’s jut lonely, grim, boring, no point
The project is lost
But without the project, there’s only work
not the worthy work of the project, but the empty work of treading water
Without the project, there’s only effort
but not the breathing effort of Beatuy, but only the gasping effort of organizing your things as you wait to die
The project meant something
Jobs and paying rent meant nothing
The project meant something
Paying US$ to a touch a woman’s shoulder
meant
means
is
leftover confetti
water in hull the pumps ringing and orders too
The water rises slowly
He says he’s sorry to the wall still facing the wall in timeout forever
The water rises gently
But drowning makes you struggle, thrashing about, disturbing the slow and gentle movement of the cold salty sea
The water rises slowly
He tells them it’s a mix-up, but he’s not sure who he’s talking to or exactly what about or why everyone’s allowed to know except him
The water rises quietly
He remembers nothing except for trying to remember and for trying to tell them what he feels and what kind of memories those feelings seem to contain even as they constrain them, swallow them, leave him only with a cut they don’t want to hear about he doesn’t want to talk about but in time it wears you through more than just loneliness and frustration something deeper hollower more consumingly exhausting
Different people on different slopes
with different ideas and different jokes
But all altogether wrong, almost as wrong as they are indifferent to the truth of this faltering pirouette
Because they don’t care, not near nor far is there a glance that wants to while
long enough to know
What slices your gut
What twists the blade ever deeper
What laughs you down into shag rug on plywood floor
what wins by making you always lose
what wins like Trump wins like crime wins like abuse wins like lies win like might-makes-right wins like meanness wins like cruelty wins
what wins like that, with such violence that win-lose inevitably becomes lose-lose, that calls win-win just a loser’s whine
Whatever
The project will stand again
or it won’t
His wife will float in on butterfly wings to rescue him from the lonely hurt and dogging frustration
or she won’t
He will stand upright within himself
or he won’t
The country will choose to share or thuggery will choose itself more and more, with evermore insistent dishonesty and cruelly violent certainty
And these strange trickling sounds that he’s been told are just the vapors of his own madness will either invent real reasons to justify real harm or will fade away into the silence some say they already are
So whatever
It’s not as if
He’s done a great job
dressing the wound and returning nobly and effectively to the holy wars
It’s not like that
It’s more like
a gray squirrel
flinch-flickering his bushy tail
as he bounds across the grass
at the sure-bark of a fatold darkbrown proudround oak tree
with the worms
mindlessly
(or, if his bio-theology’s correct, almost but not quite completely mindlessly)
chugging dirt
in every possible direction
through the soft pitchblack earth below
and some child
crosslegged on the soft bending grasses
picking dandelions
late now in the season
dandelions turned white and puffy
dandelions you can blow into the wind
a wind to carry the tiny fluff-tipped, seed-ballasted sticks
here and there
this way and that
eager to go and never you mind