INDVSTR14L F4LL4CY...

industrial fallacy

of sustainable progress

promising greed-based ethics

BVRN TH3 BR1DG3, B3G1N 4G41N...

burn the bridge, begin again -

rural southern psyche stuck

in freebird guitar solo

L4Y1NG 0N TH3 C0VCH, D00R...

laying on the couch, door

open, watching the birds bounce

around the yard I don't own

25-Man Metaphysical Roster: Brighton & Hove Albion F.C.

[25-Man Metaphysical Roster is a football dork methodology meant to establish a listing of players who have been most active for English Premier League teams in their past 100 non-friendly matches. Essentially, it is calculated by minutes played, but weighted towards most recent games. The end result is a listing of the 25 players in a team’s recent history who have had the largest hand on their metaphysical sporting trajectory. The English Premier League was chosen because it is the highest level of football played in an English speaking country, and I speak English. Also, it is what comes on TV here in the USA, where I fucking live. And yet still I should clarify I hate English, and also America. Thus maybe I hate myself. Should I not fail in maintaining my unpaid deadline, a new 25-Man Metaphysical Roster will appear on the 1st and 15th of every month.]

WORKING THROUGH A MISSED YEAR BECAUSE WE RE-LAUNCHING THIS BITCH ON JUNE 1ST, 2019!!! This would’ve been Brighton & Hove Albion on December 15, 2018.

#1: LEWIS DUNK (same as last time Brighton & Hove Albion was metaphysically ranked on 01-Jan-2018, which means it’s also his SECOND METAPHYSICAL STAR)

#2: SHANE DUFFY (up from #5 last time)

#3: MATHEW RYAN (up from #12 last time)

#4: DALE STEPHENS (down from #2 last time)

#5: ANTHONY KNOCKAERT (down from #3 last time)

#6: DAVY PROPPER (up from #11 last time)

#7: GLENN MURRAY (down from #6 last time)

#8: GAETAN BONG (up from #9 last time)

#9: SOLLY MARCH (up from #10 last time)

#10: PASCAL GROB (up from #15 last time)

#11: BRUNO (down from #4 last time)

#12: JOSE IZQUIERDO (up from #25 last time)

#13: BERAM KAYAL (up from #18 last time)

#14: EZEQUIEL SCHELOTTO

#15: TOMER HEMED (down from #8 last time)

#16: MARKUS SUTTNERI (up from #24 last time)

#17: YVES BISSOUMA

#18: DAVID STOCKDALE (down from #7 last time)

#19: MARTIN MONTOYA

#20: UWE HUNEMEIER (down from #19 last time)

#21: JURGEN LOCADIA

#22: BERNARDO

#23: CONNOR GOLDSON (same as last time)

#24: ALIREZA JAHANBAKSH

#25: SAM BALDOCK (down from #16 last time)

C0NSTRVCT10N 0F M0R3 L0CK3D GR1DS...

construction of more locked grids

continues in all corners

of American land mass

H0T3L D00R CR4CK3D L3TT1NG TH3...

hotel door cracked letting the

light from a strange city pass

through briefly, like I'm doing

SONG OF THE DAY: Beautiful Loser

Some things are so beautifully stupid they are you. Bob Seger had a knack for making shit like that, then he took himself serious, and now I think he’s actually a cyborg powered by experimental General Motors robotics being funded by the Koch Brothers. Because of this Cyborg Seger only allows you to like the appropriate songs, which are forced into 70s theme radio consciousness (now satellite channels) which impregnate your brain with thoughts of “wow I could get 0% financing on a new Silverado!” except let’s be serious, you and me don’t qualify. We are legit beautiful losers, not art ones, and great art born from truth eventually homogenized into selling manufactured shit is no longer as great an art as the fucked up messes that represent it. Nobody is tattooing Bob Seger lyrics on their bodies, or if they are they are likely cops or at least pro-cop, and nobody who is ever pro-cop should ever be trusted on anything, even simple shit like music. Anyways, these are my thoughts on Bob Seger’s “Beautiful Loser”. I hope you don’t wreck your car again this weekend.

0VTL13R 4N4LYS1S...

outlier analysis

of manmade power gridlock,

done unseen, with deep layers

L4Y3RS 0F S3LF 3XPR3SS10N...

layers of self expression

along the margins slowly

blurred beneath time's parade

CH3M1C4L R3FL3CT10NS 0F...

chemical reflections of

homo sapiens barely

natural or organic

W4LK1NG THR0VGH SM4LL T0WN 4LL3YS...

walking through small town alleys,

each step an expedition

for deeper understanding

SP1NN1NG MY WH33LS, BVRN3D 0VT 4ND...

spinning my wheels, burned out and

conjuring take-offs, but thus

far unable to do it

L1TTL3 F34T LYR1CS T4TT003D...

Little Feat lyrics tattooed

stick and poke around ankle,

"be willin'... to be movin'"

C4N'T C0MPR3H3ND TH3 4NGL3S W1TH...

can't comprehend the angles with

which people are able to

handle this pyramid scam

4G3 H4S N0T SM00TH3D MY 3DG3S...

age has not smoothed my edges -

still as wild-eyed and anti

all this bullshit as ever

B4TT3R3D 4M3R1C4N W0RK...

battered American work

van, where working class daydreams

suffocate beneath the hours

TH3 SH4RP3ST 0F GR34T 3SC4P3S...

the sharpest of great escapes

always too expensive, even

secondhand, along roadside

S4M3 L0S3R'S M3D1T4T10NS...

same loser's meditations

against life's algorithms,

burying me without care

SONG OF THE DAY: Jackie Blue

It’ll Shine When It Shines by Ozark Mountain Daredevils was a heavily played LP throughout my youth, which went with my dad to the trailer down the road when my folks separated, and then went away with me to college, and has lived with me ever since. The album cover has that plate motif that everybody in the country had back in the day, and we had a set, only used on nice dinners. I remember most nights was hot dogs and cheap ass generic mac-n-cheese, on paper plates but with those weird wicker paper plate holders to make them sturdy. But on some occasions (Sundays? birthdays? holidays?) we’d bust out the old blue and white plates, and I have very strong visual associations with those plates and mashed potatoes and peas, which was not a common meal, obviously special shit, and likely also meatloaf but my little hungry ass probably ate that right away.

This album makes me think of country, and not shit I read but what I lived. Playing in the woodpile in Rice, VA, busting up my weeble wobbles, disappearing off to the barn across the field. That house is gone, old cinderblock shithole long lost to something or other. Then there was Meherrin, home of Roy Clark (RIP) and Raven Mack (Alive!), where my grandfather funded us having a house, enabling stability that might not have happened otherwise. Playing in the woods, turning my uncle’s junk car into a time machine which can only go to Pikeville, Kentucky, for some reason. And finally the trailer down the road, which I shared with my dad, cold as fuck, clothes on the line outside by the trash barrel even in the winter. Country as fuck shit. That trailer’s gone now too, replaced by a newer trailer in the same spot.

I see a lot of performative rural identity online now, and I remember that shit happening in the ‘90s too, in real life though, and it annoyed the fuck out of me. People cosplaying white trash. It’s annoying now. There’s no glamour to that shit, and I’ve worked most my past ten years trying to break bad cycles and be a healthier human being. And I’m also incredibly proud of who I am, the whole way through, all 45 years, because it gives me a perspective not everybody has. I mean, that’s true for a lot of folks… and yet seemingly our media and cultural representations are still pretty homogenized. Even “diversity” is a fairly homogenized presentation of a liberal diversity. That likely won’t ever change. But when I see corny ass memes acting like a dude with a mullet leaning against a truck is reading Marx, it bugs me. Shit, the fact I just called it a mullet, an internet slang homogenization, instead of a short and long like what I knew it as growing up, bothers me. And I say that as a person who had a pretty fuckin’ sick rat tail when I was like 11 years old, which I could even braid, myself.

“Jackie Blue” was the radio hit song off this album, and I love every song on this LP, but this one will show up on the radio still, and it hits me in the country ass feels every time. It will indeed shine when it shines, but y’all fake shinefaces can fuck right the fuck off. Forever.

[also I have a patreon, support my wild ass]

KN0W M0ST 0F W3ST V1RG1N14...

know most of West Virginia

through various aimlessly

wanderings over the years

SONG OF THE DAY: Pop Duke

I had a mid-life crisis and bought a car… a really fucking boring basic ass Corolla, but new. This is the most basic cheap ass Toyota you could possibly buy, and yet somehow due to my familial conditioning I feel like I’ve completely fucked up. We were raised to think people who had things were lesser, or people who bought new cars were fucked up humans, even a simple ass no frills Corolla. And I guess this is my mid-life crisis. Not a convertible, not a fancy car, a budget ass hopefully reliable and not breaking down all the fucking time tiny sedan. And somehow I feel fucked up about it because of the way my family is.

This generation is the first in the American Empire’s history to have less than the one before it. The concept of generational wealth has come up a lot in my goings on lately, in how some have access to down payments for cars, or access to family money to start a business or go back to school, or to fund their dreams and wishes. And while I lack that, I also recognize how good I have it too. As I was riding the bus to Pantops to walk from the Roses to the Toyota dealer to start the process of being ripped off by capitalist greed, I thought about how this was a week in my life without a car, instead of constant reality, juggling bus schedules (and bus passes) and slowing your day down to get around without a fast way to get around. I have a steady job which allows me the numerical data that financial overlords are willing to squeeze more blood out of me, because more is still there to be squeezed, until the cards all fall and they begin fighting with each other to see who gets the last remaining drops of my blood. But the American mythology of “working hard and saving up and retiring” is not a reality any more. I’m lucky enough to work, but there’s no saving and there’s no retirement. And I’m actually pretty far up the giant pyramid scam that is American economics, meaning there’s a lot of people who have it worse than me, far worse.

I feel old. This is a fucked up system we live in, and it’s going to break. I am starting to feel too old to do the physical work of participating in the violence that is ahead, but I’ll likely have to, to protect those who have importance to me, both those I know and those I don’t know. What I’m doing personally, and we’re doing collectively is not sustainable, and in fact that lack of sustainability is creating violent reactions from the nature of things itself. It’s gonna get ugly. But also it’s gonna get beautiful afterwards. And like I always tell my children when they freak out about the future, even if the population of the Earth cataclysmically shrunk where 90% of humans died in the next three decades, that’s still like 750 million humans still alive, making new things happen. Why not you? The whole foundation of generations is generating, continuing, surviving. So fuck it. Blow my fake number cards over, repo everything and throw me into the streets. I’ll still be alive, perhaps even more so in some ways. This shit’s all fake and unsustainable and it makes us stress out in ways that aren’t helpful for survival or our intestinal health. So fuck it.

4DV4NC3D TH1NK1NG L1TTL3 0R4NG3...

advanced thinking little orange

boys advancing across the

forest floor, flagless of course

TH3 R04D N4RR0WS 4S 1 4G3...

the road narrows as I age;

"keep it between the ditches" -

self-medicated's prayer

The Adventures of Russell Jones heroic crown of sonnets

FYI, I have a Patreon, which is where people can support the creative work somebody else is doing on a monthly basis. With my patreon, you unlock various levels of rewards, which might be as simple as just seeing the posts, or go all the way up to getting postcards with poems in the mail. I also randomly give away a railroad haiku spike through the patreon each month, and began this month also doing a heroic crown of sonnets where one patron requests the subject matter.

The way the haiku spike drawings work is you get one chance per every dollar pledged, and while this is fair way to better reward those who support more, I wanted to do something that made it equal for all patrons, which is how the heroic crown project works. The person I drew randomly for this first heroic crown requested the theme be The Adventures of Russell Jones aka The Ol' Dirty Bastard, and I've already written two sonnets towards the crown's completion. I wanted to share the first one, as a way of sharing, but also as a way of pointing out I have a patreon. There is a completely ridiculous project which will hopefully launch next week as well, which I hope will become my most consuming nonsense gibberish in some time.

And even if you don't support me, support illegitimate artists. People making up their fucked up art in their fucked up ways are what keep this world beautiful in my opinion.

[pic stolen from internet]

A fatherless style born from American slums, 
a young visionary outlier, street-crier, 
Ol' Dirty Bastard was one of a kind, most rare 
American lies denier, following drums 
not fully understood by most - he was higher 
than most. Others orbited his natural shine, 
attempting to glean science from his glowing flow, 
growing rappening prose constantly from divine 
stream of conscious. Too many folks pretend to know 
alternative reality at most unique 
level... shit maybe the dirtgod's guilty of that 
as well. But young wild style Russell was born to seek, 
never follow, chasing dragons, living life fat 
as fuck and to the fullest, foolishly, with flair. 
Ol' Dirty Bastard was one of a kind, most rare.