Generation Doom
taken from various places: RAGING MEDITATIONS, a rejected chapbook; my black notebooks, and the deep recesses of my Notes app, written alongside grocery lists, to-dos, and links to articles by smarter people than i that i’ll earnestly never read.
restore the human spirit
What are you doing?
It’s Tuesday at 2:30 PM. Why do I see you posting a four paragraph long think piece Facebook status update about how the Democrat Party has fumbled election after election again? Last week it was about thrown away votes by the moderates and next week it will be something deriding inaction or silence by the fucking Target corporation regarding wars overseas. I saw someone else just this morning; shortly after I delivered my required dose of caffeine into my system, (a set of shackles itself), post angrily about the media reporting on an actor coming out as “trans masculine non-binary.” They called it the spread of the “woke mind virus.” We are 20 days ‘till Santa makes his way down the plumbing roof vent of the Section 8 housing neighborhood “new build” that you pay $1650 a month at. In his sack, he’s got a patch of grass that he wants you to take outside and touch.
You are lost.
Look me in the eyes and try to convince me you’re happy flipping back and forth between FOX and MSNBC screaming about how one is full of nutballs and psychopaths while the other speaks the “real truth.” Maddow is not Minerva, and I think I’ll kill myself if I find out some of you think Hannity is a hero for truth. Your car radio being set to your local NPR affiliate is not a sign of intelligence if you are thirty-five blasting music on the AUX sung by a twenty-six-year-old that wrote the music for sixteen-year-olds. Liking any of these things should not be foundational to your personality either.
I know what this all sounds like. I’m not trying to yuck your yum, I promise… I just… Want better for you, for us, all of us. I want a community unshackled, free to step across the aisle. I want literacy to be a priority in school, but not for the end goal to be entering the battlefield as a keyboard warrior. I don’t know what’s important anymore. Maybe none of it is. What I know for certain is all of it can’t be; and that, most importantly, there must be another way; a better way than this. I want it not to feel criminal to express a moderate point of view. I want it to feel like hopelessness isn’t the default. Most of all, I want to be standing by you under the light of a setting sun knowing that our collective desire to stick our feet in the cool sand far outweighs the desire to argue with each other on the fucking internet.
Log off.
Feel the sun on your skin before a cancer death linked indirectly to microplastics takes you and your few loved ones must figure out what to do with your social media filled with nonsense that kept you from really living. I want us all to have more on our tombstones than:
HE HAD GREAT TAKES.
I read this plea to myself in the mirror this morning. Amen.
generation doom
silicone skeleton.
cobalt cemeteries.
mine will always be the first,
to be born by the light,
of the infinite internet.
this was akin to fire,
the wheel,
the printing press,
and porn.
this was the culmination of all of those,
blood boils with ones and zeroes,
eyeballs melt from the shine of the screen.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
gunfire,
or just the keyboard marching on?
this is the apocalypse,
at least it feels like it.
this is war,
wars with words,
skirmishes with sentences,
battles of the batshit fucking stupid,
while we watch the whole world burn.
and burn it will,
or maybe not.
who cares?
as long as there is wi-fi.
i am your prophet,
as reliable as your horoscope.
our generation,
raised by millions and their unheard voices,
only rumblings through plastic speakers.
we will stand and watch,
and point and blame,
while we all cry out for another chance.
desperate.
at least we’ll be reminiscing,
resting easy,
knowing of the validation we got online.
in defense of brain rot
it's all scrolling,
brain rot they call it.
it is beautiful,
raw humanity.
the sex,
the savagery,
the stupidity,
in a syringe,
injected like an IV into my eyeballs every day.
i hate war,
but what does it say to me when the thing that was turning my stomach wasn’t the video of a Russian soldier blown up on a random Tuesday while clutching the bath mat with my toes.
i saw a woman getting was getting railed in public.
you could only see a reflection of the act off a shiny car door,
so as to avoid the censors.
i saw that while scrolling,
on hold with the bank.
kids trip,
people fall,
there are these hellacious misinterpretations of Stoicism,
gross ones at that,
sports betting predictions,
and all the world has to offer.
we don't yet know the effects of having everything always,
but if it's mostly a net negative,
and we all start dropping like flies from this so called "brain rot,"
at least i had my fun with it,
brain rotten,
and all.
bury me with the explorers,
because the sex, and death, and dumbness,
were my far-flung horizons.
concessions
do not turn your nose up at the youth of today,
especially do not judge them on their parlance,
the skibidi rizz, skibidi toilet, mewing, looksmaxxing, gyat, and sigma of today,
was the ROFLCOPTER, Trollface, Keep Calm And Carry On, bae, adulting, lit, high-key, and Bye, Felicia of yesteryear.
gone are my days,
and i concede these days to a generation that will likely be funnier than mine.
it takes all kinds.
and the wheel of time spins on,
you’d be delulu to think otherwise.
EVERYONE AFRAID
(in two parts)
I
You can feel it in the air,
It rises with the sun and never ever sleeps.
It burns brightest in the light of our god given and godforsaken screens,
Blue light the baby's nightlight,
It sings the children lullabies,
Feeds them when we aren't looking,
And feeds our mush brains too when we do.
It is this inescapable thing,
It is a mist in the night that might be swallowing us all,
All the saints,
And all the sinners,
And every man, and woman, and child.
It was made for mine,
My generation,
Who wants for everything,
Always.
Mine was the first to be born by its light,
A new generation of cave man and cave woman,
With binary painted cave drawings,
Smeared on its infinite, permanent cave walls.
It rang the new age in.
It killed and is killing the old.
It holds us hostage with its infinite good,
But,
It came with no warning label,
Of the eternal cost of knowing everything.
It lets you,
From Toledo,
Touch Vientiane,
It lets those from comfy Fresno,
Witness the horrors of a cartel beheading,
Or some poor fuck in Russia or Ukraine getting blown up.
You feel this thing,
That fuels the great beast with its riches,
It is fire,
It is the wheel,
Wrapped in beautiful capitalist packaging,
Bowed with dystopia,
It is the great unifying divider.
Thank and curse its creator,
For it killed and birthed any fuckin' hope we have
—
II
I see it every day,
Voices raising in impassioned discourse,
About fucking nothing after all.
These are the words of today's frightened:
"You can't say that,"
Or another variation,
"Are you allowed to say that?"
An address to my heroes:
Trans men and women,
Minorities,
Under-represented,
Women,
And outcasts unnamed,
You beautiful outlaws,
Will you allow yourselves to be stripped of your raw uniqueness?
You can feel it from your toe-ends to the tips of your hair,
Dick tips to dirt star and everything in between,
There is a rumbling
FEAR!
One word or phrase misplaced,
And good people,
Are dragged through an infinite town-square over jagged glass.
I am no hero,
No philosopher,
Nor prophet with answers,
I am but one man confused by the notion that any of this is sustainable.
Fuck it all,
But I play too.
I dance upon the same eggshells,
Trotting around on the same high-high horse.
I am the pungent stink,
Left behind by the fart of early internet access,
I, too,
Am afraid,
I scream at the top of my lungs,
"IS EVERYONE---
IS EVERYONE AFRAID?!"
rot
this endless scroll,
on this fucking phone,
watching fucking pointless things,
learning nothing meaningful,
much less about myself.
this is the rot of a good brain,
just like my parents warned me.
what’s worse is,
i love it.
and i’ll do it again tomorrow.
chronically online,
TCB
