The Poetry Marathon

dopamine fuck fear and food
everything is drugs
suckle oxytocin
for the serotonin gut
skin prickles
deaf and dumb
expand and contract
uptake and release
adrenaline, pain, and longing
likes, replies, emoji.
everything is drugs.

X and O
W-shaped smiley
applied chaos when nothing makes sense
and the days go by too fast to think and the years too slow
until they pass by the handful
When life and death depend on the volatility of a mood,
and the assets are valued likewise

When every day is yesterday and tomorrow never comes.

Keeping company with the frogs and crickets
as the low pressure slides in as a breeze.
Those brief bursts of cool summer
when the air is clear
and the cars drive slow.
Even when the lights are blaring
you can kinda see the stars.

I LUST FOR EMOTIONAL FREEDOM AND PLEASURE WITHOUT SHAME
I LUST FOR BELONGING
I LUST FOR SIMPLE JOYS
I LUST FOR SINCERITY WITHOUT FEAR
AND LOTS OF FUCKIN!!

I WANT TO BOTH GIVE AND TAKE
NO LONGER ONE TO THE EXCLUSION OF THE OTHER

I lust for things to improve.

(From the Greek: οὐ (“not”) and τόπος (“place”))

Forcing it – a universal error in sports and Eastern philosophy.
To speak when silence is sufficient, or enough has been said –
the work of politicians and entertainers.
*shudder*

(but also a performative wink)

I have identified the problem!
A lack of the sublime.
Where did it go?
Who took it?

meta – hebrew for dead, the clickbait articles gleefully inform us,
waiting for something to bite.
מֵת – harder to G–gle the real word, to learn.
The second home, the screen, slowly turning into a tomb,
and even the colors of the world seems to grey – dark mode
and simple opacity tricks to brute-force 3D through astigmatism.
It’s hard to think about anything else
when it’s everything we do – we were too addicted to notice.
It robs our ability to speak.

One apocalypse to pick of many.
There’s no lack of them.
And they’re all on display on the doomscroll.

As a wise man once said, “the world is a vampire.”

But the filthy open secret about life is that it goes on.
An impartial, material universe that still has a sense of irony
so strong that it might let the eternal recurrence of this life
ooze into the next.
As above, so below,
and a sneer from whatever gods shuffle through the stardust.

Poetry requires a radical honesty
that we are rarely equipped to deliver,
The sort of shocking truths
that produce nervous laughter or painful giggles
seeking social approval,
like masturbating away the fear of death.

1.145 trillion megabytes uploaded per day.
Three million emails sent every second.
Pressure building, words failing,
substance degrading,
soul-bearing, desperate diversions,
drowning in centuries of plastic.

It’s eating us.