...winter

so,
over the course of this past fall season,
the whole world seems to have gone off kilter,
and there's a resultant lack of balance that has a great many of my close friends
(by which i mean: we talk infrequently at best)
feeling like there's a big, bad, bleak, break in the business of being alive and well
in the wider waking world a-comin' on down
the (groundwater-poisoning) pipeline just to flush us all down the tubes.
to that i say:
what the eff took you guys so long to catch up?
seriously,
it took a few disastrous reality checks for the majority
of my optimistic-based-entirely-on-privilege friends and family
to see the bigger picture the way my magic eye decoder-vision has for decades.
i'm just sayin',
i bought a billion bullets, beans, and band-aids ages ago,
in anticipation of the collapse of civilized society.
what?
i'm not a disaster-preppin' 2a/3%/libertarian doomsday armageddonist.
nope.
i'm just a man who chose to live in a region that is incredibly inhospitable
to worthy warrior poetry in all it's forms,
and i don't pretend to hold onto much faith,
nor much hope for the boundless beneficent enlightenment of everyone else.
on the ones,
competent, calculated, coherent communication is not welcome around here.
and because i don't live in the supportive-and-tolerant sector of educated
and entitled academics and artists,
within the ease and comfort of a lifestyle-conducive concentration
of similarly-minded synergistic community members,
i've seen more of those people that my friends almost never ever associate with,
in greater numbers, far more often, and for durations longer than i would've
thought i could ever endure.
...and you know what i do about it?
did you just say peacefully protest?
yeah, exactly.
i take a walk with a sign.
c'mon, man.
no way.
i do what i always do,.
i work at being the best version of myself.
and i work through the hardest days, the longest nights,
the loneliest stretches of darkening doorsteps and grim tidings-
...and while the alarmist reactionary vigor one gets from receiving
a surprise referendum affirming the OPPOSITE of all your values
as the preferred template for the future, by the vast majority
of the demihumans, blarps, and necktard stump-creatures you live amongst,
yet largely unaware of-
that is, until their mutant mating calls, (or their ballots, or their bombs)
drown out all rational, intelligible sounds-
must be a huge explosion of shock and rage and outrage
and desperation and despair
and hopeful hopelessness and harmful helpfulness,
and heartache and headache and hand-cramps, from thumb to pinky,
due to all the letter writing and art-making and bird-flipping....
but,
dudes,
those feelings?
this sense that suddenly the terrible tipped the scales,
and broke the levy,
and burst the dam,
and bubbled over the top?
i can empathize, but i can't sympathize,
because that's been literally every single actual day in the woodsly goodness
for way too many years now.
(i insist there is definitely and definitively no hyperbole in that statement)
so,
while 2016 seems to have everybody elses' tighty-whiteys
in a wedgily-edgy and molto tight pinch,
and their motivation at an appreciably feverish pitch
for a new year of resistance and recalcitrance towards the powers that be-
the world-controlling war-pigs,
the resource-commodifying capitolist cadre;
the glass-ceiling-installing penis-dangling male misogynist oppressors;
the puppets and their globalizing/order destabilizing masters;
etc etc etc,
i'm still busy doing what i always do,
in the ways i feel most accurately represent my beliefs, ideas, and principles.
there's just not a lot of room for the luxury of worrying about the echoing,
outward-expanding concentric rings of of harder times in the broader sense.
it's not that i don't care-
(i've been accused of that recently)
it's that the immediate needs of this lonesome life of mine take up all of my time already.
there's so little left over for meddling on a larger scale.
a starving man cares not for the long term,
his urgent, deeply personal problem takes precedence.
i'm starving, man.
just, not literally,
y'know,
because of all this amazing vegan food i make...
*
guys,
integrity is continuing to maintain your principles
in the face of hardship, adversity, or disadvantage-
insanity is maintaining consistency despite negative results,
with the (usually unlikely) expectation of a different outcome
under identical conditions.
it seems like the line between the two
is by-the-bye and by-and-largely defined by success or failure.
...and also, likely, the number of attempts.
i'm no longer sure if i've crossed from one to the other,
or if i haven't moved at all,
and which side of the line i was on to begin with.
....hard styles are the ones i remember most clearly;
never quiet, never soft.....