priorities

i was born on canada day so i should be living there.
every year there’d be fireworks on my birthday only i hate fireworks.
but still, you take what you’re given even if what you’re given is shit.
you take it because that’s what you’re taught by your parents and by most others.
we stood on a long balcony 56 stories high above the concrete
and looked south across the lake and west and east and they were launching them all over.
you couldn’t hear them, just watch the little sputters up against the black sky,
a feeble attempt from 5700 feet above the city.
we drank gin and stood behind countless asians who snapped photos of the redundant scene.
i felt like i should be happy or grateful.
i felt like i should somehow document it all.
but my drink lost its cool crispness in the hot summer air.
and that’s what immediately concerned me.

raiding the dumpsters

now it’s a race: who can come up with the most inventive gimmicks to stay afloat the tepid, sewage waste overflowing the canals.
scoundrels and amoebae, like rats twisting their greasy moustachios, planning out a coup.
soldier ants eviscerating the Queen Bee and vice versa.
everyone is doing it so why can’t we?
the ones who spin tales are at fault as well.
some, more equal than others, are as famous for their desire to stay anonymous as their fictitious stories.
the rest (less equal than some) are a frenzied mob caught in a ponzi scheme, holding sheets of paper over their heads to protect soft tissue from being crushed by crumbling brick and mortar as they all merrily roll through the drive-thru on the weekends, waiting for their order of buttered biscuits, gravy, and grits.

skin diver

they nailed a thick tree branch onto a giant board made of wood slats stuck to a brick wall in an abandoned alley strewn with graffiti.
and then they painted the dead limb green. the color of freedom, it said in white, in Farsi just next to it on the board.
a crowd gathered flashing peace signs.
and then another crowd, except the new mob was dancing and celebrating some dead singer who didn’t mean much to the first crowd.
the new mob, moving backwards.
the new mob, smiling.
the new mob.
two swarms of humans, resolute in their missions, cannibalized one another seamlessly, peacefully.
it was strange…the contradiction of all of it. energy flowing in separate directions.
ying-yang Tao.
and some of us moving through it like a skin diver slicing through a school of mullet
not documenting anything.