detained and arrested for disturbing the peace in the beautiful, the penultimate — the age of Aquarius

— president’s on 5th Avenue,
can of refried beans in his hands, any
requests for refills of hand sanitizers have been jammed up and back-ordered, and
the logistics for delivering all of this shit
might as well be in anagrams
that someone wrapped in pentagrams,
posted to Instagram
rasterized and then pixelated
so that any attempt to glean any information from any image rendered after this date —
henceforth, now and forever —
is never really indicated
but still remains proof positive
beyond a single shadow
of any doubters doubting
that we were never ever really truly integrated

Well, what does that mean?

What it means is that we have been polarized, and so
what you see before your eyes are the final, varying results
of a sick social experiment gone awry
one in which an entire populace —
after enduring such a tumultuous birth before accomplishing international dominance —
is still refusing to (or is unable or unwilling to) fulfill its initial promises
to all its citizens — and/or to confront its pasts —
because it is more concerned with what is to be globalized and punished
than with what is real and what is honorable —
has so swiftly and so crushingly and so permanently become immobilized
hyper-solderized
demodified,
codified and quotafied
the truth is no longer vocalized as much as it’s
pilloried and pantomimed
equality became disqualified precisely at the moment
it was determined that the distribution of school funding should be localized
community is social construct,
but that means shit since we no longer socialize
Look down, Dumfuck! Your shoe’s untied!
Look up, now! You’ve been de-voterized!
too demoralized to be horrified,
ironic considering both your parents prioritized being holy-fied
but since the god you worship sees not a body, but a temple
it ultimately means your murder, too, will be glorified

But how did we get here?

easy —
We made our traumatized our most dramatized — really —
and all it took was us convincing them to sign contracts, allowing for them to be
filmed, satirized, and sodomized
and all of that was way before we had them pushed to a brink —
some dangerous point where they’re unsure what to think any more —
and suddenly — it seems — they start to not be able to see any really legitimate way out of this kink
or, simply, for this not to not be mollified
you reek of too little fluoride and not enough formaldehyde because
you are not looking at life
you are staring at a Polaroid of a poltergeist,
you are watching something ancient, terrifying come to life
on your TV
it happens every night
but you’re not allowed to close your eyes
and you’re too afraid to start a fight
think about it this way:

Our grandparents built bunkers for the bombings,
now, here we are, having to hunker down with a dummy
whose every thought is a conundrum
whose every motive is wanton
and who looks like something you would get only if — now stick with me here —
something you would get only if — for some unknown reason —
you decided you really wanted to cross-breed a vampire with a donkey,
with the personalities of a werewolf and a junkie,
the moral compass of a dragon with a zombie —
Man-Bear-Pig and a flunky! then
gorilla-glued the entire shitshow together and
handed this new life form roughly four-hundred and thirteen million —
we’re talking today’s money —
a suit, “The best ties!”, and a microphone,
and once you got it home you spent the first two months just letting it wander,
forcing it to learn nothing, teaching it to forget words, and walk around like a mummy
before it’s determined — to our collective horror — that it’s its finger that gets to hover over the buttons

THIS IS NOT FUNNY!

this is our future,
I want to talk about which programs we should be funding

THIS IS BULLSHIT!

this is all of our hard-earned tax money!

“But, wait!”
said the human android created by Professor Hiroshi Amano,
Is this the moment you find yourself actually about to do something?
Or are you just going to finally finish folding your laundry?
Is this a pigeon or a pumpkin?
Is this a state, statue, statute, statesman, status, stasis,
staged statements on public safety, a bank safe or a safe place for a pulpit
which we later discover is directly connected to Congress?
Is this the parking lot where our car should be or the future site of a mass grave?
Is this where my laptop got made?
Is this where people go when you say they no longer behave?
If it isn’t then my next question is, Is this a cage?
Is this a wave? Is that a giant glacier riding on top of another giant glacier,
both giant glaciers made entirely out of name-brand Styrofoam plates?
Is this depleted coral reef an okay place to bathe?
You say this is the place where your kids will be raised?
Oh. Okay
Is this anthrax in that bouquet? No? Oh, it’s sage?!
What are those people doing in that petri dish?
Oh, That’s a parade?!
How strange!
Question: That boy there on his way to the eighth grade, is he a slave?
Why does he have braids? Should I be afraid?
Is this kind of rhetoric okay?
I must say, you keep claiming your country is not up for sale
Sir, why is it always out on display?
This works out only one of two ways:
This is either the American Dream (by way of Italy, England, France, and Spain) or this is a maze
It’s very possible you’re really feeling the electricity in this moment right now,
But it’s also equally quite as possible you’re literally being tazed
Why is your cell phone shaped like a grenade?
Do you want to be squeezed out like toothpaste or sprayed?
Has anyone checked in on Portland?
I hear the entire west coast won’t stop burning.
Can any of us be saved?
Seriously!
Is that your democracy, full of hypocrisy,
sitting improperly on a fulcrum, flexing, and pressing its weight while under a blade?

[reader takes deep breath]

YOU ARE THE LIQUOR
POURED RIGHT ON MY LIVER
WHENEVER I LOG ON TO TWITTER
PLEASE STOP!