I walked through the single glamourless door briefly allowing the thunderstorming wetness to parade over the doormat. On the walls were a series of portraits spaced evenly between lights brightly illuminating the grey, water-stained ceiling tiles. The images were simple ink drawings of a panda composited over predictable, decorative bamboo designs. They called to mind stained glass Stations of the Cross. The booths and tables were predictably placed pews. At the alter, a woman told me what I wanted to hear. A Coca Cola faced clock and a bulky, heretical refrigerator provided a backdrop. While I waited for the sermon to what later would become unbearable intestinal penance, I saw three individuals worshiping their plates in silence. A cellphone hymn briefly ended the awkward monotony only to be stealthily set to vibrate. The brown bag with a single staple didn't come soon enough. I made my offertory and happily shuffled back into the rain.

A coffee drinker since she was eleven, she didn't anticipate the silver pitcher of cream suddenly falling short of her morning habit.

She over-apologetically excused the mess made from the renegade creamer and her feeble, arthritic hand.

Repetitive stress
is nature's way
of saying,
"You're capable of much more."

Time doesn't heal all
wounds,
it allows
our brains time to
widen synapses and forget --
to disassociate scars
from emotional pain.
This biological function is
invaluable in a world
where suffering prevails,
but it also weakens
our immunity
when revisiting
the source of our scars,
which can be both
a relic of joy
and memory of
suffering.

stone henge playground
unique, depressed relic
toddler slides
littered with
bagged forties
cracked concrete
tarnished metal
chain-link cage

preparation for
dispondency and
displacement

As long as people
are sunken by misery
feeling helpless
without escape,
excitement or passion
there will be superheros.

The nature of the superhero
is not to combat
the antagonist and the
relentlessly unabating evil.
Superheros fight the internal
hopelessness within us all.

the street rat isn't going to convince you
to rot your teeth and
haul a black trash bag
filled of half-empty plastics
because it fits your good-evil paradox

listen to her because she has nothing to sell
except compassion for some pocket change

Riding home on Fountain Avenue after a full afternoon of cruising around, a man in a white SUV honks his horn behind my rear wheel. The road is sufficiently narrow so as not to allow both a bicycle and a SUV to pass at least for another block. When traffic clears in the opposing lane, he speeds past me slowing down just enough to audibly yell, “Get out of the fucking way.” I yell something incoherent back which prompts him to slow down to engage in a heated exchange. I ask him why he needs to go so fast when there was a red
light ahead---a logical conjecture based on given visual stimulus. To which he retorts, “I will fucking run you over, you little faggot!” He speeds on ahead only to be stopped by the red light.

Aggression in the male is caused by several factors and biochemical exchanges in the brain. There is substantial evidence to suggest that aggressive behavior is largely genetically determined. This is due, in part, to genes producing elevated testosterone and lower serotonin levels which encourage impulsive behavior associated with aggression--in this case, malicious verbal aggression.

The SUV driver, prior to our verbal exchange, was probably overwhelmed with the stress of not being able to overcome this simple obstacle. His head had been clouded with years of commercials promising his SUV would be able to bulldoze over mountain terrain—suspension and paint job intact. He and his powerhouse, gas-guzzling machine were trapped on an urban street stalled by a less-expensive, more efficient form of locomotion. He was definitely not scaling rugged rock formations or parting shallow stream beds.

His stress signaled an immediate reaction from his mid brain--the source of automatic, primitive cognitive reactions. He did not consider the red-light visual
stimulus, as I had, to allow upper cortical processing to occur. His immediate reaction was rewarded by a release of dopamine in his hypothalamus. The aggressive action he exhibited probably satisfied the immediate need to avoid the stress of a bicycle (i.e., it made him feel better) but was futile in comparison to the overall late-afternoon traffic that would allow me to continue
ahead steadily as he stuttered through the streets.

bar hawks and stool rabbits
text messaging each other
robotically mouthing words to an
obscure, overblown song

drawn shades exist
irrespective of spectators --
those who'd sneak to peer into
thoughts, struggles, tenderness.

blindfully imitating, distrusting
failing to demonstrate intimacy.
eyeless faces lack
unpredictable nature of
violence and nurture,
deception and deprivation,
humor and humility.

the sun shines skitters
around windowless souls

Third encores are for
hedonistic, privileged youth
that pile pirated music
on their pricey
music players.

red lipstick
spilled over her mouth's natural boundaries
filling the cracks and holes
and staining the aged porcelain
with brilliant cement

where was her friendly mirror
to tell her she was outside the lines,
outside social and artistic reasonability?

Before her operation,
she couldn't chew her food.
She had trouble speaking.

When she took a drink,
liquid dribbled
from her mouth.

Worst of all,
her face was
hideous.

Where are the birds, bees
and pay-per-view fees?
Siphon the flood waters,
leaving the boat stranded
without a hatch.
It never rains in paradise
not once in paradise.

Passive resistance is
only successful when
violence bites back
on the retina of the world.

Religion and advertising are machines
designed to subvert truth
in favor of exploiting
an individual's propensity
toward faith.

Yet, there is a distinction
in what they offer:
a community of like-minded individuals
or a collection of like-appearing individuals.

Today is the future. And today is the day I no longer feel culture is above and beyond me. Neoprotocultural music, movies, books, media: they're erected on industrial cement--and I just learned this today. This type of cement crumbles the next day and you can't return it if you forgot the receipt. How can millions of people also forget their receipts the next day?

I'm saying I don't feel like that anymore. Today is the day when I stop worrying about how undemocratic the radio is or how unsatisfying a trip to the movie theater is. I'm finished emptying my wallet for something that's flawed, fleeting and breaks when I turn my back. In an artificially constructed system designed to profit as few people as possible, fifteen minutes of fame is all you get.

Today is the day I refuse to be an asshole for the neoprotocultural suppository. Remember the days when trends were defined by markets, demographics, executive favors? I do. That day is not today because today is
the future.

maximum distraction
explanation proclamation
travel chair
window pain
satiated emptiness
electrical prison
fascinated drone
trekking inward
criminal injustice
satirical politics
dead beginning
broken foreshadowing
floppy driving
invisible advertisement
casual gender
soda capture
religious texture
peaceful murderer
ascending downward
hardcore meddling
homogeneous diversity
acid reindeer
accomplished failure
irreprehensible guilt
aborted feces
time pirate
improvisational marching
mediocre brilliance
repo manifestation
greedy philanthropy
civil dismemberment
sincere rapist
fluorescent darkness
chaotic conformity
dickless fear
blue-collar administrator
velcro pubes
digital grope

Another Paul Revere will ride through our twenty-first century streets and warn of us of our revolution. She will be riding a bicycle by night armed with piercing
red lights. The revolution she'll forewarn will not be an invasion by another imperialist nation. The revolution will be the preparation for the armed resistance of our minds and souls against those that would seek to disempower and dilute a population of wage-slaves.

The apocalypse
is a metaphorical and literal ending
of the usefulness of stories with endings.
The ending of endings.
Religious and scientific apocalypses
fire and brimstone
to fiber-optics and nanotubes.
In a godless, chaotic earth,
we have learned to
genetically engineered apples
from the Tree of Knowledge.
Graft an orchard
until we realize that we are creating
more entropy than is useful.
The fundamentalists were right:
anarchy is destined for those
that fail to believe in the religiosity
of what the priest says.
Salvation for the truest of believers.
The choice shall be:
surfing a hellishly dynamical system
or baptism in ignorantly blissful waters.
The apocalypse will bring an ending to
the notion that we are ending.
Once this ending has been realized,
there is only beginning and birth.
It will be the ending of endings.