contrast

social media link-shameless self promotion packaged as ‘art’- takes 1 to know 1 😜  name an institution or company as verification but what’s that really prove?don’t ask to collab-take ideas seran wrap sell as your own- What’s a creative consultant without creativity? brand without a cause? name without content? What makes x, x, such that it is x and not not x? im no x. This year I realized the dream of a common language is nothing but a dream. But at the end of every day I go back to sleep

Dodging Game 

Duck between the football field slats

surrounding the strongest prospect of success

here  “Big Dreams” a selfish man laughs in cruel disbelief

at a kid’s fantasy as if it’s not also his only hope.

And y’know they’re just teenagers and preteens and kids and babies 

charging each other despite danger

for a chance. Pray the rapidly rising

prospect of injury, or worse, fatality,

won’t rise from probability to reality

100% and it won’t be just a game.

Probably the bodega tv 

down the street will be playing 

politicians chatting casually about the issues

as two old men gab about aged whiskey over a game

of golf, thinking a play of words is enough.

Really they’re playing with lives, aren’t they,

making pawns of people somehow always kept out of the shot.

All they can do is watch their chance crumble

as each flippant word is fumbled by

the Boss—“Its just words.”

New York City Law, Article 15, Section 291, numbers 1-3.*

Don’t make promises you can’t keep.

I can’t watch the next program;

a “game” with the probability of injury

approximate to the likelihood

that a child with a gun will shoot

himself accidentally. In short,

someone always ends up in pain,

and I can’t bear to see.

I always choose to cross the street—

“Oh coarse, Oh calloused feet! The best

at covering the feeling of helplessness

in these cadaver hands.”—taking mobility for granted.

Spectators are also guilty.

I know my next move, predictably to

blame the avoiding game 

on fear. I’m privileged enough 

to stand over here The privilege

to turn away The privilege 

to wait To refuse to see but today

I’m also scared of what I might hear.

(Applause and cheer or a Glock 17) 

It hurts me when you say

‘pick your poison.’

You know very well

we’ve already finished them both.

(The sound of destroying each other.)

*§ 291. Equality of opportunity a civil right. 1. The opportunity to obtain employment without discrimination because of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military status, sex, marital status, or disability, is hereby recognized as and declared to be a civil right. 2. The opportunity to obtain education, the use of places of public accommodation and the ownership, use and occupancy of housing accommodations and commercial space without discrimination because of age, race, creed, color, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, military status, sex, marital status, or disability, as specified in section two hundred ninety six of this article, is hereby recognized as and declared to be a civil right. 3. The opportunity to obtain medical treatment of an infant prematurely born alive in the course of an abortion shall be the same as the rights of an infant born spontaneously.