When the muckrakers are taking the tools of the trade to comb over the cries of the vanquished - well, at least the man gets paid. And who has time for intellect? It doesn’t make good copy. Make concessions to your history. Stand in patient solidarity. You’re selling old headlines, don’t you have anything new? Contriving oppression, rich white man. Get a fucking clue.

Is mama happy? Is mama proud of the walking trigger warning she unwittingly shat out and wiped against the grain, this shit stain: the college conservative? A turd slowly sliding down the puppet master’s strings. The right-wing is coming, and they’re back with a vengeance. The incels and the fratboys love their president. Reform your campus! Make America Great Again! Can I get a “market-friendly” and can I get an amen? You play to old scripts for dumb pricks, fell too hard for the grift. More Jacob Wohl than Ben Shapiro, maybe you should just enlist. Submission is your business, business is always good. You lick the boot enough, you might get to the foot. (Wowee!) Where pathology ends and politicking begins may be well up for grabs, but the party platform’s a blast: Every worker a slave, every woman the same, the common good can’t be saved, you’re gonna get it. Until the planet is cooked for the company books, bankrolling all of the crooks, you’re gonna get it. White ethnocracy now, once you’re good and bailed out, never wondering how you’re gonna get it. All alternatives crushed, our prospects are flushed, no getting’s ever enough, you’re gonna get it. Do you need a safe space? Do tears fall in your boxcars when your worldview is shattered by your first-year seminar? The straight white manchild sieg heils, the inconsolable victim. But he’s getting what he wants and our future is grim. So forgive my indifference, your “exchange of ideals'' might mean new horizons on a rock strip-mined of life.

The highway’s calling, you’re only young once. Let’s get out and see the nation that is second to none. The rent’s not due for weeks. Route 6 is an easy ride. Your neighbor’s in the backyard burying his hard drive so it sounds like the opportune time to make a clean escape. Grab some kirkies, grab some j’s, let’s see what makes this country great cuz we both like roadtripping like yuppies, so let’s embark; yeah, we both like dropping acid in our state national parks. Turn off the NPR man, I’d rather not hear crap about a war in a country we couldn’t point out on a map. Yeah it’s so many miles wearing down this pilgrim’s feet. It’s so many cops, so many fucking Applebees. Has everything that may have once sparked patriotic pride been sold off to the developers? Has the clown finally cried? When you see the American Jesus stationed on the interstate, he’s wearing an orange jumpsuit and slaving for the CCA. Monticello down from Camden, all on the same coast. California sugar daddies, no there ain’t a brag or boast. The townies become junkies. The junkies become dead when there ain’t a job for them except hillbilly heroin. What exactly happened on the day they say the music died? We lost Tony and we lost Clarence, but Chris Brown is still alive. So if this song depresses you, try retail therapy. You’ve got the right to choose your place in this human centipede. The spirit of the times, debt peonage and ghost towns. What is this unmoved mover? It’s Walmart all the way down. Paper, or plastic, what’s inside your bag? Our former empire of havers is now becoming had. And if you’re not a Sackler, then a Neilsen family. You can stay poor or commit crimes against all humanity. No, the system isn’t broken: it’s at peak efficiency churning out McMansions grinding up young children’s dreams. Friend, take only pictures. Leave only tire tracks. Maybe leak some documents and become an expat but there’s nothing to be proud of in this hollowed out core. Helen Milagro lies supine, Count Carl (Icahn) has the floor. Suddenly it’s a starlight tour of an imminent doomsday and we will damn well know the culprits when we all are washed away but someone tore up Forrest’s crutches, now it’s so easy to see that America runs on bullshit from sea to shining sea.

The same day that Father Christmas was run right out of town, the devil went down to WHINSEC to address colleagues and the graduating crowd. Oh the mood was high, and on their way he drove the family station wagon past protestors chanting at the gate. He laughed right to himself and said, “The hippies have come back after all again!” [It begins.] It didn’t start in Yorktown - the world turned upside down but after a three-course meal in an old foundry on the outskirts of town. “If the libs want ethical battlespace, we’ll let the pindicks in NGOs turn the bloodbath into a blood bank!” he bandied from his minaret, but the irony was lost on the newly-minted regiment. “...and the freaks outside can take a hike if they can’t take the fucking heat!”: slams down his refreshment and sits back in his seat. “Dear, that may have been a bit on the nose.” But the diablo next to her already knows as he slumps down face first into his duck roast. The projector comes alive, it’s an early-evening showing. Plucked from his head, the friar hands him back the bullet. “My penance for pulling a grenade out from a six year old’s gullet (see: the wisdom of your metropole) Know it. own it. It’s your atonement and your solvent.” Our hero comes to later, back at the ranch that night. From under the marriage bed he grabs his piece, careful not to wake the wife. And what would she see opening the closet door? But as the sanguine cliche goes, all’s fair in love and in war. He wept right to himself and cocked; “For the filthy wars that daddy never fought, what he hath wrought…” When 3 AM calls, it’s time to paint the walls with numbers all too proportional. Wake up with a bad head, a sad dead general.

Well "we buried God with Hitchens" or so we are told by the teleprompter rolling the final credits slide. And you better believe it’ll fall on an eclipsed Levant in the path of totality: a 1948 timestamp. So Jibril’s urgent message to the merchant might very well have been the troglodytic tag, like gasoline on a rag. Insurrection pending because every single loss is a win for the GPD. You know heroes never die - no, not hasbara sicarii learning their scythes within the overgrowth of public opinion to reconfigure broken glass. Perhaps we’ve chanced upon philistines that cannot register the artist from the art, pawn from legislator. Why don’t you just call on your critical analyses to decommission these tanks selling souvenirs in Gaza and timeshares on the West Bank? Have the interests been served? Well, then it’s time for dessert: in no way suggestive of the malicious intent of foreign correspondents crafting pesky narratives. We’re nothing if not denigrated and demonized. But pay no mind to the slander, we colonize in defense. And of course, it always looks less occupied on the other side of the fence.

An asshole in every room, the lights flicker “Full Vacancy” because the eggheads got detectors for a beating heart in the machine. The big man’s got a big stick, and he’s coming around again. Collecting on your final breath, when the ledger’s looking mighty in the red. Viscera, you’ll spill your guts and be chalk art on the street. As if we haven’t spent enough time in the company of catastrophe. We’re chopped up, served up, continental breakfast at Bates motel. Well, I don’t wanna go to heaven cuz I already live in hell. Let them all eat underclass, there’s no such thing as shame. Every hour, every minute, every second of your day they’re looking in your windows and they’re busting in your brains. You’re fine sitting pretty, cuz you don't want a war. If you’re afraid of struggle, what the fuck were you born for?

Like any good fearless and conquesting rake, I left a trail of linen lead sheets in my wake. Scrawling on the walls but did not quite deface. Just making rapid fire tracks through quaternary space. Speaking tongues - an articulate binary. Depositing a payload once carried. Unfettered, on the contrary: this anthropic clown car at carrying capacity. Ascending the uncanny valley. The Cambrian crawl to terminal velocity. A face-warping formality nestled into this niche as we’re speeding up for Allie. My anthem is a hymn of devastation, a lock-step march off a precipice of our own making. Sorry mom, but it’s only forward-thinking as pure as any motive that could be called motivation. This soiled germ line bent to the will of consecration. Sorry dad, for this constructive “misbehaving”. Speed up for Allie. Speed up for LA. Deflowered, demystified. I’m a disenchanted fucker until the day I die. With every hope dashed and bonding tie dispersed, I’m summoning warm bodies to help run down the universe. That she might look up above the festivities at a pulsating, nebulous mass like me.

On a bed of roses, I’ll rest my head. Silence is golden. Golden is bread. Am I so muted as to be blind? And who’s that goofing on my timeline? Officer, lock me right up if it’s a crime to be a patriot, a steadfast replyguy. To bring a smoking gun to the good fight, it’s on: say goodbye Don. I’m still with her. Gotta blame the Russians, blame Carlson. You can scream “Wisconsin!” but my work is done. Could I ever be held responsible? They’re on their paid leave, I’m on their payroll. It’s so blunderful. Listen man, it’s entertainment. We’re a dime-a-dozen side of the same coin. Broadcasting unto all stations, and why you care about theater between crooked billionaires. Never fancied myself courtier to the state. I just write so that the brunch crowd can relate. The ruling class is only an old myth, they say. Hey hey, no way. All the years of horrors will be annulled, and those abandoned will be consoled. Cuz we’ve got a future, and it is just. So are you with her, or are you with us?

He, the author of a most-mortem climax gets his kicks from them, scorched earthbound hostages, arms-for-schadenfreude kickbacks. Bring out your professional mourners to direct the most heinous crimes to which you could confess when nothing ever proceeds like regress. She will learn to die with all our favorite things, a knapsack of the impedimenta this baptism by pyre brings. How much longer can you carry this conceit played out like a sick sacrificial pageantry? The idiom of home sweet Holocene. The calculations now are in and we have not been consulted but we’ll bow our heads for now, the worst begins. Idiocrats never learn and your children will surely burn. The show must go on, fill bottomless urns. Do you have the strength to stand up even when you’re sinking in verse wrested from the other side of your extinction, in the shadow of the dying star on which we’re wishing? Signed, regrets only [the most fitting valediction].

I. Good Night Goleta: Goodness, she didn’t miss a single shift, that’s just what the papers say. Clock in, let all your digits do the talking and count on the working day. Righteous, who could have seen the likeness to a pale of insanity? Red dog black tag Lil Ms. Monster. Oh by God I think we’ve lost her. One more cell in the bad roster. War paint, scrawled across her face like the walking wounded, the drive-in movie screen. She’s gone, she’s gonna be the pretty girl, holding the magazine. Victor, Lord knows who ever would have picked her and if He’s looking down on me. Please, let Craig die. The street’s a landmine. When you let... Goodness, she didn’t miss a single clip, that's just what the papers say. See them gurgling fire crackers on the wrong holiday. Writhing, they said they heard the angels crying cuz they smelled a protege. Hang on tightly deadly rhythms. Femme fatale, you maggots smitten. “The Racist Press” who are we kidding? Berkowitz. They say she never missed. II: The Dogs of Khan Younis: Ali, Nizar, and Mohammed couldn’t stop it and neither could they wait. Hummer comes rolling up the dirt road, and they all know the game will have to hold. The megaphone from the bulletproof window calls “Where are all the dogs of Khan Younis? Now come to us, cocksuckers, كس أمك !” Their mothers’ pleas are lost to the wind like the infants. The rock they’re dashed against [The Holy Land] Blood sprays across the sand. And that’s all your prophecy foretold. It’s a slaughtered ten year old and if it breaks your soul you’ll be ground into paste. The ghost crammed back in the machine. A shot of rainbow turpentine. For every barbed wire cradle there’s a vacant grave and a poor fucker to take your place. And the cracked limp body cooking in the sun twitches <<apparatus>>, apparition. You think there’s a wrong and there’s a right when there’s only victim and might and checkpoints at the gates of paradise.