Chicago x12

Why can't I ever
stay happy?

Where Have All the Flowers Gone?

As often happens,
I see something online
and go "wow, that's really
inspiring."


This is one of those things:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc


I had seen the Invisible Children documentary.


But I really didn't know who Kony was.
And then I saw this video
(which has gone viral).


And it struck something.
How do we let this happen
as a global community?


As human beings,
we allow this corrupted man
to abduct youth, to
force them into violence,
traumatize them,
rape them,
kill them.


There is something wrong with this.


We are all humans,
we all have the sense
that these actions
are wrong.


This should not happen.


30,000 children
should not have had to 
endure this kind of torment.


They are children.


They can never be the same.


We should all band together 
to protect global rights,
global safety.


We can stop violence like this.


Gradually. Slowly and with measured steps.
But we have to start somewhere.


The Invisible Children group
has found (what I think is) a good start.


Arrest Kony.
The #1 criminal on
the International Criminal Court's 
list. 


The movement has garnered so much 
attention that last year
Obama deployed advisors
in Africa.


We have to keep them there,
we have to get the word out,
we have to stop this cruelty
and we have to 
fight 
like
hell
to defend our fellow human beings.


We can all agree
that this shouldn't happen.


Things like this 
sadden me,
as a citizen of humanity.
Why does this happen?


How can one man with one idea
ruin so many lives?


But now
there are a lot of people
with one huge idea,
one idea to change the future.


Stop Kony.


I believe it.
I want it to happen.
No one should commit these crimes
and get away with it.


We crave justice
as humans,
we ought to 
bring it down
on Kony.


Here's the video if you haven't seen it: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4MnpzG5Sqc

Arms

Let's hope for spring.
Let's hope for renewal
and more good times.


Let's perpetuate 
the small moments
of happiness we can grasp.


Let's quelch the restlessness
in our burning souls.


Let's turn our faces
to the sun 
like the peonies
and poppies in the
gardens. 


Let's return our
spirits
to their rightful places.


Let's never feel 
lonely again.

Sink to the Bottom with You

This weekend.
It was 
amazing.


Everything.

Skinny Love

Things I want to do:




-Be in a band.


-Create really good short films.


-Publish a book of poetry.


-Travel to India, South America, Scandinavia.


-Live in Park Slope.


-Sew my own clothes.


-Be a size 8.






-Get out of here.

End Love

I need to go out
and make something happen.


Static and static
and static
and static.


The television screen
blank.


The page
blank.


The mind
rotting.


There is nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing


for miles and miles and miles and miles.
Miles of barren hills
miles of broken sky
miles of twisted up ambitions.


Nothing
so far as the eye can see.


No movement.
No creativity.
Nothing good.


Just the rain
rain rain rain rain
it is everywhere,
constant companion
to the unmoving earth.


The ground disgustingly
stable beneath me.


I want to fuck something up.


I want to fuck something up
beyond recognition.


Change change change.
Grant me, bless me, christen me
with change.
Beautiful change.


A new view and new perception
I can't find for myself
because I am weak.


I am not an artist
because I can't find it.


It's not here.
Everywhere but here.


All the times
except now.


My shadow 
is yawning in feigned sleepiness,
constant tired
or 
just 
useless and uninventive?


I can't tell because 
there is nothing.


I want to go out
drive around
and do something.


Something
beautiful and new.
Something inspiring.


With my hands empty I am useless
and weakened. 


I need a constant project.
Some constancy of my mind I understand.


But there is only
a falsified state of
void.
Philosophical gap in my reality.


A crack in the earth
of nothing.


There is a whirring of
empty space in my head. 

The Magpie

Plath had a point:


"Is there no way out of the mind?"


It will always catch up to you.
Every good day has its 
evil twin. 


Every night, a toxic sadness.


A melancholia we have in our hearts,
some of us wearing it like a heavy
smoking jacket. Our shoulders slumped
with its immense weight.


We are all Atlas in some variation.
Some of us fall down 
some of us can't move
some of us roll the globe away
and give up.


This melancholy lives in us,
a meningitis of the soul
as it clings to our spinal cords
and branches itself
into neurological blooms
that spiral and blossom.


It whirs the stars
and makes the nights
unbearable,
but so short.
The state below consciousness
is never enough
to dispel the taste in your mouth.


Bitter;
orange juice after
the minty freshness
of Crest. 


It is a stone lodged in our throats.
Insoluble. 


It is the ending of an illusion.
When we realize 
it was only a witty game.
Smoke and mirrors
forever.


A melancholy which
gives a new somber meaning
to the Beatles'


"Nothing's gonna change my world".


We sputter across the universe
in a burst of white heat
and are gone.
Forever living with
the burden of man.


Of being.
There is no nonbeing,
no void.


And here lies our fault.