Poetry Old and New
like the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy
has DON’T PANIC printed on front
the Bible should have
DON’T BE A DICK
printed on the front
sanity is a spectrum
some times it’s better to be on one side
or the other
than aimlessly bouncing around the middle
what religion boils down to
is a way to get people to believe
the best is always yet to come
if you are perfectly atomized
following all of Jesus’ teachings
will make you miserable
while following all of Satan’s
will have you feeling great
just as a quantum particle is changed
by you measuring it
a person is changed
by you labeling them
i’m a piece of shit
but i’m not allowed to believe it
(((i’m not allowed to bounce my thoughts off their thoughts)))
remember i am a sopping wet sacrifice turning into a
putrid rotting carcass while you are told to wait and hope
(15 years and only got one janitor job i didn’t take because i thought i could do better)
(religion)
tying desperately needed moral teaching
to superstition
was nailing the life boat
to the main ship
I tried to cash out my faith
they looked at me funny and said there was a penalty for early withdrawal
and they wouldn’t let me see the balance
faith was like one of those quantum particles that disappears upon observation
I am an unperson
I am a constellation of thoughts, drives, and emotions
with no center
I don’t hold grudges, grudges hold me
I don’t think, my thoughts think themselves
(sadness due to individual as well as collective situations)
remember that love is like quantum entanglement
it means a part of your heart will break
from something that could be happening
thousands of miles away
it wasn’t worth it
people say the pain of the process will make sense in the end
but kneading and baking are only worth it if the bread doesn’t burn
As I write this some people are trying to concoct some kind of redemptive narrative on how the last four years of Trump made us better somehow. Some people paid the ultimate price for his ineptitude with COVID with their lives. Others’ mental health was reduced. I’m a mess. Two of my smartest friends are engaging Q Anon, one as a believer while the other as a vocal critic. In 2016 I had hope that this could be turned around but now, even with more Democrats in power I do not. I think we passed a tipping point where both the radical left and radical right have come to believe the game has already been lost. Fatalism is the most powerful way to be powerless. And people on both ends of the political spectrum are gaining numbers while the middle is being hollowed out.
I didn’t suffer so much directly from Trump despite a couple brushes with losing my healthcare. But I think sometimes what you lose in the suffering is worse than the hurt of the suffering itself. Society is more toxic than ever. Families are torn apart. Feminism is attacked, hurting women, and its backlash hurts men. Let me tell you, it has felt like eight years, not four. So maybe Trump slowed time down so much that he packed eight years worth of misery into four.
recent poetry
the only reason something is real
is because someone who can hurt you says it is
waiting is the worst pastime
because the time doesn’t pass!
you can be evil, you can burn goodness
and be warmed by the light of it going up in flames
but once it’s all gone
you have neither shelter nor warmth
a weakness of the self-esteem movement:
if you are on the bottom
then the negative thoughts about yourself are dead on accurate
(especially if you are a male
as being on the bottom keeps you from both friends and mating)
it’s easy to tell who the oppressor is
because they will be angry at you
for seeing yourself as the victim
…and that changes everything
As you know I am someone with a physical disability (moderate visual impairment with weird-looking glasses) and a mental illness (bipolar 1). I think a physical disability plus a mental illness adds up to more than the sum of its parts. At least it has in my life.
- In all my communications with people I start out with negativity right off the bat because of my thick glasses. In every relationship it’s like I am making the first golf shot from a sand trap!
- Because of my visual impairment I cannot drive. I cannot go to people’s houses and force myself on them. Because of my physical disability and mental illness I’m almost always the needier party in the relationship and as such is the one initiating. This keeps me from initiating.
- Because of my mental illness I don’t have the inner strength to shrug off the negativity from and live above my physical disability.
- Because of my physical disability I’ve been rejected for jobs I was qualified and now have so many gaps in my resume I am unemployable
- Because of the way I’m treated on account of my disabilities it is impossible for me to believe I have innate worth–there just isn’t any evidence to back it up! Non-disabled people are often treated better so they find it easier to believe this lie.
May I ask, how many successful people do you know or have even heard of who have both a physical disability (particularly a visible physical disability) and a mental illness. You hear countless stories of people rising above their physical disabilities and becoming something and you often hear of people with mental illnesses who can function. But have you ever heard of someone with both make anything of their life? I haven’t!
Religious Addiction
Ferkins and Gaspar were right. I have religious addiction. The only difference between religious addiction and salvation is whether there is something at the other end you are interacting with. An example if you are spending 8 hours a day on the internet but that time is spent working and making good money to provide for your household, that isn’t internet addiction. But if you are spending 8 hours a day on the internet watching video game commentary videos, that is.
If there’s something at the other end, that’s a relationship. If there’s not it’s just stalking. The reason I suffer from religious addiction is because I was raised religious and I have nothing else. People who have things that give them meaning and value don’t usually suffer from this.
We need to focus more on helping people build an image of God in their head that will make the function. With me that has gone totally awry.
Take alcohol for example. For most people it is something that helps them unwind, have fun, and connect. But for people with mental illnesses it is often an addiction and causes them to be non compliant with their medication. To the casual drinker who enjoys the bar scene those of us who can’t handle alcohol seem strange and foreign. For me this is what religion is. The voice of God told me to do all kinds of crazy stuff like drink piss, date women out of my league, and kill myself. I was exposed to every toxic trope Evangelicalism had to offer like the idea that you will have photographic memory of your entire life as you burn in hell. Plus church people treat me like shit but that has more to do with disability and negative symptoms than the religion itself.
poetry to power and disability
when the whole world has always said “you can’t”
and when, despite your best efforts, you say “I didn’t”
its a sad demoralization
to overcome prejudice
sometimes your best is still not enough
only the disabled
recognize how precious and life giving
conformity can be
because only we know the ostracism and scorn
that befalls us when we can’t
the idea that God is near to those at the margins is unfalsifiable
because those at the margins have no voice
so anyone experiencing the opposite is shut up rather quickly
the room doesn’t lie
you can tell people’s opinion of you by taking it in the aggregate
(but CBT therapy, complete bullshit transfer, will force you to discard this information)
humanism was mainly for the humans in power
because for them virtue is completely optional
humanism was design to goad them towards choosing that option
the one with the most power
is not the one who makes the decision for you
but the one who forces you to choose in the first place
why would you assume
that those who went through suffering
with their powers of articulation intact
would speak on behalf of those who didn’t?
sometimes the word itself answers the question of its definition
when you are forgiven
that meant you made the other party give in
a lot of abuse
is just punishment
for being disabled
don’t pray for me
treat me as if my prayers had actually worked
Truth is Tall!
truth is TALL
it marks the gaps
between high status
and low status people
silence
I don’t view truth like the Greeks who equate it with beauty or the Christians who believe Jesus to be the way and truth. I view truth as the machinations of the materialistic universe. It is what makes an apple fall towards the earth when you let it go. I believe the social rules of a society are almost as ingrained as the laws of physics even though we are lied to from the cradle that they aren’t.
One of the hard things I have had to deal with in my life is the people I knew who cared about what was going on the world ghosting me or ignoring me for being too low status. My closest friend from college ghosted me for being too low status. He cared about Africa and Latin America just like I did. Then more recently during Africa’s Ebola epidemic I was looking for someone who cared about it as much as I did but the only person who did was too high status to talk to me.
I bring this up because my low status works against me in ways that it wouldn’t for the average beer and shot person whose interests were more in line with the average American.
I bring this up because there is a huge humanitarian disaster wrought by back to back hurricanes in Honduras that has displaced hundreds of thousands and flooded urban areas and crop land. The person I found it out from was the owner of Mayan Buzz Cafe which is a place I love. You can donate to relief here. It is legit because it’s someone my dad knows.
for me, it isn’t over
Adelle has a song “Someone Like You” that has the line “And that you’d be reminded that for me, it isn’t over”. That song is her not being able to get over a guy but I think it applies to people like me who don’t have the machinery to forgive. I like to say time heals some wounds but infects others and it is true for me because I see pictures of people whose wrongs helped precipitate my psychotic break (and my inability to not live at home) and everything just comes rushing back again.
I can pantomime forgiveness but in my heart it is bullshit. If you wrong me and the wrong’s shadow falls infinitely far I won’t forgive, beyond that I really can’t. I can choose to not retaliate and treat you with respect but I cannot forgive. That’s why Christianity’s imperative to forgive confused me, I get it that they were trying to break cycles of violence but to actually forgive you would actually need the experience of God that that religion claims to give you.
Time heals some wounds but infects others. Some people get over wrongs much worse than what I have experienced but I think whether you stew or pull through has a lot to do with how much opportunity in your life is offered. Had I gotten a job and a place and a social life and respect from people it would be a lot easier to put the past behind me because I overcame the wrong the best way possible, living well is the best revenge to people who were obstacles to you living life to the fullest. I also think this is why in developing countries in the Middle East where groups of people hate each other a lot of the hate is just due to not having anything else to do. These terrorists are usually engineers that weren’t even allowed the privilege of drinking to blow off steam and have little to no future vocational prospects. What do you think is going to happen when you offer them a chance to express their anger in terrible ways.
Psychologists like to brainwash people into thinking forgiveness is a choice which it partially is. But something inside of you that you can’t control also has to make the choice and if it doesn’t all bets are off.
poetry from a place of resignation
false hope is worse than no hope
just as a cancer cell
is worse than a dead cell
the way people treat you
isn’t a reflection of them selves
it is a reflection
of what they can get away with
let people describe you
by the way you take up space
like spoonies
who have a chronic condition
and can’t give society all it demands
one man’s miracle is another man’s tragedy
(Evangelicals prayed for a Trump victory
and the expense of those of us with disabilities)
olfactory hallucinations are often popcorn
and voices in your head are usually male
and talk radio can drown out the voices for some people
Christians and psychologists think you can make resentment disappear
with a simple prayer, cognitive trick, or coping skill
the truth is resentment is like nuclear waste
it can’t be contained until it’s addressed
and often fully ridding yourself of it is impossible
on1 thing fo4 sure,
GOD HAS GOTTEN A LOT
B I G G E R
IN THE LAST FOUR YEARS
Absence
The most blasphemous things I write are about God’s absence. I sympathize with the Bible villains who shouted Jesus to come down off that cross. Some of it was mockery but some of it was sincere wanting God to show up and kick some ass. I really think it’s what we need now.. But I don’t possess the power or really much wisdom either.