Iron Skillet

write please read and enjoy

I don’t understand

Gravitas, perhaps, natural tendency to gravitate, toes pointed as I am pulled by gravity

By the tips of my fingers, gently by the hand

Brevity bereft of me, levity, I levitate, barely, I scrape the floor

Forward, toward the never, come whatever, forget-me-forever more

Living is not always not giving up, a chalice is not chaste based on the contents

For then each sip is just from a cup

 

Martyrdom in suicide is not such an achievement despite the cause

It is far harder to live in prison, unbroken, undeterred, and give no pause

Slip not once, sink no ship, your waves wash you out to see

That execution or rebellion are the options if you cannot be buried from sight and memory

They must kill you, or they must set you free

 

Truth is I put myself on suicide watch and amped up the difficulty in isolation, I adjusted for escalation, planted my flag in my own planet and passed aggression on from an alien nation, I am the success story of self-destruction via denial hoisted on self-worship, self-desecration, idol and with idle hands I carved a jigsaw puzzle to cover this sham up under, I own two handguns and two rifles, so many sleeping pills I could be writing this with my heart scaled up while my pen is dipped in Nyquil, how did I ever age? I hit the page with more free time and enough pent up rage to form a blockade with protesters who sit on the road, and I lie still, I don’t believe in the voiceless, the language is keep away and you’re being victimized, profit off it when you call it, every four years, but the circus tent has long since been pitched, it’s people who are not fit, when I pass a background check, enough melee weapons alone to arm a small riot, I write it and if there’s a hint of calling for help, everybody better stay quiet, I’m as petty and sour as I enjoy verbal fighting, a radioactive depression that gives my toad brain more power, calamities to call tragedies, stricken by maladies we laugh at misfortune from safety like they’re comedies and then when it strikes back we cower, that’s karma, it’s not a b***h it just reminds you that you are, I punch a clockface out, glass in my hand, dry blood from the witching hour

 

I don’t care about any debate, destroy me, there’s nothing of human value left to depreciate

I love writing

I think because I know it’s killing me at a speed I can live with

My agreeable terminal, I punch in and tick moments off right quick then,

Swap a topic, fall into a moral quandary over whether or not I’m any good if nobody online actually follows me

This alone is a hybrid, abortion breathing, free-form and hip-hop influenced poetry

To actually get in verse I ride a coffin in the back of a hearse, dead seriously

I’ll cross the room and switch the instrumental in my mind, bass’ boom for bass guitar and guttural vocals heralding doom

Shredding razors in the throat, spitting blood on every line, metal as all hell, and then drop both genres and just be me, because honestly

Writing in a style other people want to see, it’s their baggage and it’s a lot to carry

They want the quotables, make it short and breezy, digestible and pretty

To not have to think before they put my text against a background for their socials, to say that’s deep, or fake awe at the beauty

I want to unravel your brain with chopsticks, eat it from your skullcap, steamed on rice, I want to kill you for wanting to kill me, contain me, making me marketable, I do not adhere to a public relations strategy

I’d go barefoot if we walked in each other’s shoes, some of youse would go blind in an instant if you had access to my memory

Swap back, I for another I, if I had to live your life I’d likely die, if you couldn’t master the nuanced pressure of mine, you’d think this cage is made of gold before we said goodbye

Suffering on the surface, plain, at least that I understand, there’s infinite ways to hurt each other, we haven’t even reached the surface, the worst year so far, let’s see what time has planned

Mass appeal would require something like bending into an unnatural shape, I still hit subjects that make my most dedicated go, “Who asked you how you feel?” I’d rather give a thousand words a lot of hot air than fix you four lines for your timeline so you can have a pretty meal, my chum for thought is that we’re going to fight for the plate, you takeaway whatever you ate; now that’s a steal

I’m not making food that’s visually appeasing, it’s never meant to be

You better eat your God damn vegetables before I chase you through the woods

Like I’d be(an) stalk you through the mist and steam off the broccoli,

Restrain you to a chair and table and make you apologize to Gaia while I record you eating every tiny tree

That was corny

 

Oh right,  

White people always compare their lives to the struggle of such,

How do they know, among this entire pigment, who has ever felt the true oppressive touch?

My own family hates my own family for being Catholic, for being percentages, excuses for their nature to come out when the reality is as simple as this much

If history has a villain, they cast a white man to play the role

In America, what can be said that hasn’t about any single part or the country as a whole?

Culture is a beast with many different heads, it’s a tapestry, a quilt, with so much reality, so many woven threads,

That we forget what some of our revolutionaries have fought, killed, and sacrificed their lives for, the marches and tears, sweat and wars, what has been done and said

We’re all one race, all people, and I believe this

If everyone gave each other respect, they could give each other love, and if everyone felt love, we could have peace; on at least one front of our faults

But we would rather kill each other and record it, or be the murderer, or those who stand by and watch a murderer and twiddle their thumbs behind their uniform rather than stop them instead

The KKK, Proud Boys, white supremacy

In order to believe in any supremacy, of an individual, even one who makes up a group that lends itself to the supposed supreme status of their people as a whole

How many of your own people must you anger, terrify and drive out of your life first?

Racism is the useless paradox imposed by man on man, it’s a testament that a human can fly to space and still represent a species so profoundly dumb, break down the population it stems from, they say white people, perhaps that’s not all so true historically, I’ve seen the news recently, but white supremacy targets a universal majority, it seems less prevalent, the sheet-wearing bigotry, these immortal-initial-colonizer sheep, they bleat and I spit at thee, I have a theory about the sideways growth of hatred if you’ll listen to me, torches and Templar’s misappropriated crosses set aside, they stake their claim in nationalism and pride, in costume the mob is easier identified, malignant ignorance is never done yet, so it has evolved in these diluted and polluted hotbeds to infect, infest, spread through these hotheads wherever it can get, by rifle toting idiocy, violence at idle decree, hate crimes change with the times and take on society to challenge the system legally, where the woken minds sleep, there’s the backwards-open minds, narrow but in their own eyes they’re wide, seemingly, they pick convenient history, the bad parts they forget, no questions without the right answers on their ears do they ever let, basically you don’t need a burning cross and robes because it’s not your skin, it’s your mindset!

 

In short within the races are people who hate their own people, racists, activists especially, serve an agenda that encourages the hatred of an umbrella, and it falls over the heads of most of the world, no matter their race

If you were the devil’s advocate you might find it hard to help a group who won’t include their own people, they make us all look bad enough that the term “white people” doesn’t even apply to people who are white so much anymore

In short, in the fight to establish white supremacy, white supremacists have established white people as a joke, an insult, because their actions are extreme and radical and reflect on all of us

In short, I am a white man, I condemn not only white supremacists and racists, pedophiles and rapists, but if a group is so counterproductive to acknowledging that we can all coexist in peace in harmony if we only work for it, strive, want it, and give up what stands in the way

If we only give respect to each other there can be love, and if there can be love, there can be peace

In short, if all else fails hit racists in the head area, they aren’t using it for much

In short, I support the death penalty for pedophiles and rapists

Kill a Nazi and it’s good for your soul, kill a pedophile and it’s like cleaning a stain left in the fabric of the universe

 

And white people, even I’m sick of it, don’t talk about a pie-chart of how many places you’re from if you’ve never left the continent, I’m just a piece of s**t Texan, I don’t care what anyone says, just be a white person, be a good person, and take back some of the dignity we left in shreds

I never loved my roots, I never understood the interest in picking through leaves at your ancest-tree, my heritage is as old as I am and I want to let the dead be, but the stories, I never turn them down whenever they tell me, that my grandfather, Ted, dad to my mom, he was a tragic figure, a tortured war hero, an alcoholic, immigrant, a father of six, third in line of the men in his own family for what I call the curse, his father and his brother, fatal heart attacks, a coal miner, a rambunctious cook, an abusive and explosive bottle of rage who killed real Nazis, who threw bottles at my mom and said he’s keeping a corner of Hell warm on RSVP, all I think of when I remember him are these horror stories… because that m**********r used to beat my mother, she would shield her sister even though she was so tiny see, my aunt was even younger, and he terrorized my uncles so they were scarred for life, four older brothers, I can’t tell if my family even loves each other, he made people in his home duck and run for cover, killed enemies overseas and sent all his money back to Vietnam families when his own was starving and he didn’t answer to them for their supper, he would let them suffer, drink his cheap s**t, swig and swing blind, if you couldn’t outrun him falling over, you’d get hit, steal my mom’s whole paycheck and make her taxi him around, the only shame is I know him so well, and I never got him to save me a seat in Hell with him while he was above ground, I inherited the curse, the genetic predisposition to explode, heart valves and fly into a blind rage mode, I hope I’m lucky enough to die before I ruin too many lives like my uncle Buck, f**k talking about kings in the past, I talk about my branch of the artery, this bloodline spurt being the last, when I see my ancestors I’ll tell them to kiss my a*s, dismiss them all and gift them all with the graceful presence of stooping low enough to graduate the class, grandpa you spent so much time trying not to be an Irishman that you became Alabama white trash, get disowned, dethroned, be alone, make my dad’s family’s teeth gnash, they know I know their idea of buying trust involves transactions with literal goods and cash, if they ever leverage my nephew or my brother or my sister-in-law, I’m gonna be gone, manifesto blank pages, plans in my head drawn, vest on, we’ll take confession, and I’ll give the toxins their poison communion, they’re already dead to me, just match the image with the reality and call that s**t a family reunion

 

There’s something very wrong with me

I’m comfortable with the idea of dying suddenly and dying, suddenly

The notion is like Kevorkian,

It visits often and the offer never befuddles me

The danger inherent to someone of such low-tide mental stability

I know why she wouldn’t tell him yet, why would she?

 

I’ll tear a thought of thin air and plant it on my descendants in the form of an aneurysm like a Death Row pendant, when they drop everyone will stop and wonder how it got there, I’ll kill the conception of an idea in your very head, while you dream it up in bed, and black out the lights across your country so even satellites can’t figure out why it looks like the sun is out at night, I’ll raise my white fist for black power, shout it and dive onto a riot shield with my face so full of mace I come up in online footage looking like a disgrace, more a threat to getting snot and tears all over cops even after the protesting stops in the first place, I’ll say it for real with no joke, black power, and choke on the smoke from California to Australia, if the Navy can figure out where to drop me off, I’ll clear my cough, I’ll be pale and pallid with the heart of darkness and love without respect for anyone or any culture, I’ll never let authority kill me, I’ll unleash a jungle cat caged inside, pacing back and forth, knowing the flesh and ribs holding it have no worth, a spectator to an infrastructure devastator/orator, a tyrant king on a militant fling like Malcom X Boseman, cut off a speaker and throw sonic waves so hard they break every other spine that’s weaker, spill my guts and crush you until you’re ashes and a puff of smoke like cigarette butts, a roadie but believe me I will throw bose, man, and if they’re twenty feet off the ground I’ll frog splash you, just to toothpaste your stomach and laugh when you stand up with whiplash too, jump into a mosh-pit and kill you so fast the police will arrive on time at the scene of an active crime, f**k a Pulitzer, I’m a howitzer, I want to break the Geneva Convention with a rhyme, my plan is to go to archery camp and throw bows, man, get pissed off when I can’t hit the target, jab an arrow through the counselor’s heel, arteries, and nose and grab fifty fuel cans, fill up a reservoir with gasoline, spray it from a hose and light the whole world on fire until I can sit back and admire how it all looks from the frying pan

 

When I can, I sit with both legs crossed, straight up in bed

Always late at night, and I close my eyes

No new thoughts in, only old out

And after I take that in, sometimes

I ask myself:

“What do you want?”

“As a writer?”

“No. As yourself.”

“In general?”

“In your life. A partner? Career?”

I look at this, stripped of all the logic and side-details, the painstaking instantaneous processing the human mind can comprehend to create existential anxiety

I reflect in a negative manner

“27, newly licensed, single white male owner of four firearms. Not employed, not published, history of mental health issues, poor student, unattractive and uncomfortable in general, and I am only distantly okay at my one main hobby. My ‘art’ my writing.”

I heard a knock on the door that woke me up and screamed at it, in a condo, while I was by myself, I’d never woken up midscream before

So, I worried if I was late and someone in my true family needed me

 I was just scared, alone with what I am like for a few seconds one day

Now I close my eyes and I know they have done everything

Without them I am not even a real person

If I had no assistance, there would be no living with my head

They would need to cut it off

I shamble on, bleary eyed and without focus

Starry dreams of what I could and can accomplish, walking dead

I am so casually dismissive of all the red flags, I don’t care,

I have not left myself, something has retreated into me, and I must go and find it

For when I search myself for some dire components, they’re not there.