My Social Media Addiction

I need to let go of anger’s dime bag
Social media is not unlike dope
While high, my eternal spirit will sag
& I’ll never be able to find hope

All social media is fentanyl
Or the emotional OxyContin
I have to remember that it will kill
The human honesty that is within

So as you read this on your Instagram
(Or Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, or Tumblr)
Keep in mind that the better me should scram
& use the world of journals: remember?

If I could spend 24 hours without this
Thinking’s ability would be the gift

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Fast Food Jazz Hands Sonnet

Jazz Hands in front of President Lincoln
Re-enact our cultural heritage
We think it was “darkies” we were punkin’
But it was ourselves that we disparaged

We thought we could belittle the minstrel
But it was ourselves blackface diminished
For America’s the joke cultural
Even when “Amos & Andy” finished

For the minstrel show that we once laughed at
Has become “Pravda,” state television
Operated by Fox-Securitate:  
The free-market’s pathetic reduction

In the curtained wings of the world’s grand stage
Our nouveau-riche land is showing its age

An Ode to Our Bubble

I am easily distracted by life
Mesmerized by the detritus cast off
By the dizzying rotation of strife
In this way I devolve: become a sloth

12/30/18

I naïvely attempt to comprehend
All the supercharged notifications
Contemporary society sends
For its momentum’s continuations

Why do the shenanigans of others
Strike notes that resonate with my soul?
Mayhem, thievery as well as murders
Show me people’s failed ways become whole

With increasing frequency I see
Vaguely conformist people act out
& bourgeois acceptability flee
Killing peace’s opportunities stout

How does a man or woman deputized
To enforce our pecuniary rules
Come to commit these things we demonize
Though they have been furnished all of the tools?

Are these defects in individuals
Or is there a systemic problem?
If the problem is particular souls
Why d’we have so fucking many of them?

How do common problems metastasize
To the 1st deadly sin of homicide?
Why do people insanely fantasize
That killing others will restore their pride

Mornings, I greedily turn on my phone
Looking for the world’s outrages current
Today, see how a man gunned down his home
Then spend the day plotting how we’re diff’rent

I should look for the similarities
Between the homicidal & myself
(& not the curious specificities
But psychological traits on our shelfs)

For the man who kills his whole family
Is, 1st & foremost, a man just like me
That something has modified insanely
(I’ll investigate how this came to be)

But my smartphone is designed* to keep me
Judging & distancing myself from him
& in this way I will never truth see
For without understanding, life is grim

So now please help me to inventory
The physical reality of life:
Not covered with mythology hoary
But with hints at the meanings for this strife

Remind me that the pain is just friction
Ev’ry physical being must endure
It’s the obverse of orgasm’s diction
That we might get to enjoy, to be sure

Some cleverly attempt to configure
There is metaphysical unity
Where “all is part of a perfect whole,” sure
(I cannot buy that “non-duality!”)

12/31/18

I don’t need the evil to create good
Innate in my being is right & wrong
I know that “right” is the action I should
Try to commit as my daily life’s small song

So I must confess all the ironies
Of this long poetic meditation
About people who overthink theories
But, sadly, my style is rumination

This doggerel will not ever surface
In the journals that real poets respect
For these are simply thoughts in cursive
That good editors clamor to reject

But still I tap all my fingers counting
Out ten syllable vocabulary
In which I try to add thoughts amounting
To something that has some meaning to me

& if you have read this far along, thanks
Because this is merely the digression
Of an old man looking for other cranks
Who are disappointed with depression

This interminable stack of stanzas
About a human’s vision’s raiment
Is hardly an extravaganza
But is just another entertainment

*programmed

American Greatness Lies Bleeding Sonnet

Abraham Lincoln airily declared

“With malice toward none[:] charity for all”

& then was like a dog by racists slayed

Thus continuing America’s fall

Into the deepest abyss we have moved

A trench under five miles of racism

The rotation of our caliber grooved

Marching blithely towards modern fascism

The Identity Politics of Race

(Thought to be the scourge of all us colloreds)

Has taken DW Griffith’s face

& will drag us down with these poor dullards

The American Election has said

World War Three’s coming bringing death instead

Pittsburgh Synagogue Sonnet

Antisemitism’s original
“Orientalism:” creating “white”
European & Caucasian normal:
It’s our oldest, most traditional blight

The dehumanization of others
(Mostly “minorities” of color)
Reduces the value of all God’s “Brothers”
(Being “right” creates a moral dolor)

I want to scream to antisemitism
As the serpent’s most original sin
Reducing everyone’s humanism
Throwing civilizations in the bin

Seeing American differences
Assures Greatnesses’ disappearances

White-Black Supremacy Sonnet

There’s a measure of White Supremacy

In our Blackness’s complex alchemy

This identity takes complacency

So that we do the work of hatred, see?

For individual identities

Have been put in conflict with each other

Because of artificial scarcities

We are set to have brother kill brother

It’s an artificial zero sum game

Where egos must have winners & losers

(For it is impossible we’re the same)

& hence society favors bruisers

Remember the suspicion you feel

Is a key part of racism’s raw deal

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-timi-oyebola-suspect-brooklyn-20181001-story.

Insanity Headline Sonnet

Insanity’s tenuous conditions:

Untreated mental health is dangerous

& for people there are no renditions

From this fate’s fickle finger arrangements

We leave the least among us all alone

With only their close families watching

(& those kin folk have their pride to atone)

So people’s insanity’s stretching

How the mysterious mind operates

Is beyond ev’ryone’s everything

Chemicals, hormones & even phosphates

Are in charge of what, to life, people bring

So, please understand that insanity

Is a problem for the community

http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/nyc-crime/ny-metro-child-thrown-building-brother-20180929-story