This one's on me

Another innocent life is laid to waste

Another body lays on the slab and the streets are full of blood again

It’s time for us to start holding people accountable starting with ourselves

We here in this room

I’m going to hold myself accountable

No more blaming

The bullet

Or the trigger

Or the finger

Or the badge

We need to start making those with badges earn them

People in power earn that power

We give it up so easily

We can’t even agree whether or not someone being killed in the street is wrong

People argue about someone being murdered in the street and look for the minutia to find blame in the dead

How the fuck did we get here?

Why are we here?

How did we allow this to happen?

From here on in I’m accountable

Because I did nothing, we did nothing

We’re doing nothing

Nothing is happening

Nothing is changing

And it’s only getting worse

We’re blaming protesters for protesting the very things that are the most disgusting about us

People are in an uproar about the peaceful ways we’re trying to change the most violent of our ways

It’s so fucking stupid

I don’t know what to do anymore

Who is to blame?

Another body

Another bullet

Its’ not enough to talk about it

It’s not enough to write about it

It’s not enough for me to tell you how I feel about it

It’s not enough for you to feel something about it

It’s just not enough

When people begin to burn down their cities out of frustration we’ll wish for days when people took a knee during the national anthem

We’ll wish for days of people marching in the streets

We’ll wish for black lives matter

We’ll wish for arguing on social media

How did we get here?

How do I get the blood off of my hands?

(I added this meme I made for obvious reasons. Shame on us all. )

The in between

I walk through these doors a realist rational atheist

I find that today dare I say spiritual

Somehow I have tapped into the underlying river of things that flows out of me and out of you and under my feet

I feel it

It’s not god, but it’s definitely not nothing, I know that now

I don’t know what to make of all of this

It’s a new idea

It’s almost like a new organ in my brain is being born

And I’m having trouble putting it into words

But that’s what we are isn’t it

Poets

To take the unspeakable and put it into words

That’s all that we do

That’s why we’re special

We’re not better than anybody else but were certainly different

Take the things, the nuances of life and existence and the universe and write about it

Put it into words

Metaphor, humor, sex

We take our personal experience and make it digestible for anyone else who wishes to hear it

Personally I find this very tolling

I’m constantly trying to make sense of things or constantly trying to define things that may or may not need defining

I wish I could just say

“Look at all those beautiful trees!, Look at the beautiful sky”

I can’t, I’m constantly trying to reorganize, rearrange and reinterpret for myself and for it to be told to other people

I’m trying to constantly make poetry

It’s very taxing on me

I find myself in-between realms

I’m afraid that I’m going to slip in-between the subatomic particles under my feet into a place of nothingness

If I get exhausted I might lean over on a wall and pass through it into a place I never thought existed and still not be sure it is does exist

Some part of my being will pass through and fall between this place and some other

The problem will be that on this side of the looking glass all you will see is an adult writhing on the floor speaking incoherently as the him passed through the wall and the me on the other side of the wall can’t come back to answer any questions or shed any light

And nothing is resolved

Sounds ridiculous, but the thought enthralls me

The only way I can get to the focal point of anything is to go out of my mind

Some people say it’s inside some people say it’s external

Somewhere in-between constantly riding that razor edge

I’m cut and bleeding

I’m not the same person I was yesterday

I’m not the same person I was last week or ten years ago

And I’ll be someone else tomorrow

Constantly in flux as everyone is yet hyper aware of it

So critical of every moment and nuance to try to decipher and interpret it

It makes me wonder what came first me or the anxiety

I am it, the physical tangible amalgamation of it

That is my role, the thing I will have to get used to and ride out for the rest of my life and maybe beyond

If there is such a thing

Remembering Monday September 10th, 2001 the day before operation everyone's fucked commenced.

        If I remember correctly this was my third day of college. I attended the former C.W. Post campus of Long Island University now known as the LIU Post Brookville campus. This was a Monday and the first Monday after having moved out of my house and into the Brookville dorm after my first weekend alone with just my thoughts, strangers and as much booze as my arms could get to my face. It was a good time. The campus had "overbooked" the dorms, however that happens and were placing kids all over the place including off campus locations like hotels, broom closets and gutters which was bullshit. Three other guys and myself lucked out and were placed in a huge room on the second floor of three. The first floor was the boys and the second and third floors were the girls and the four of us. We were warned not to use the incredibly convenient bathrooms across the hall from our door as those were the girls bathroom and we had to walk downstairs to use the boys room. If we were caught in the girls bathroom we would be expelled from the school so, BONUS! They never caught us taking the occasional late night piss, or my roommate drunk sleepwalking into there after a bender and making a bed of toilet paper and sleeping on the floor or more obvious, on the sink. At least three times I woke in the middle of the night after drinking, saw him gone and dragged him out of the bathroom back into our room before the sun came up to burn all of our good fun. We had a lot of fun, but that was all after 9/11. The five days of my college career prior to 9/11 are kind of a blur, obviously, but mostly because my entire college experience occurred in a post 9/11 world.

I do however remember a pre-9/11 world. The memories and experiences get more selective and foggy with each passing year but I lived for seventeen years prior to 9/11 and I do recall the kind of world we lived in, and the kind of world I lived in, my small circle consisting of fifteen years in Queens and two in Deer Park, NY. I remember people. I remember the news on the television. I remember President Clinton leaving and President Schmucky the clown taking office. I remember the instability of the middle east. I remember the state of the African continent, Europe and the rest of the world or at least how it was fed to me via the news and my parents and teachers. That's the best a seventeen year old kid can do. Pay attention and listen to the people in the know in his life. I'm sure people who were well into their adult years at the time might remember more of the world than I can recall but if they're honest I bet they'll say they never saw the world we're living in today careening toward us. I remember Americans. My family, friends, neighbors and every single person I came in contact with. We were Americans and still are today. I remember Democrats and Republicans, I had a number of both inside and out of my family. We didn't see completely eye to eye on every subject. Religion, the Pro-life/Pro-choice issues, bombing overseas, etc. Issues existed back then as they do today but there was and is a crystal clear difference. The difference is that on Tuesday September 11th the entire world as we knew it changed. Now, I'm one to say things like "change is good" and "we need to change in order to evolve" etc, but the "evolution" that I've witnessed over the past fifteen years is different. I've witnessed my country and the people around me divide into smaller and smaller groups with each passing year. I've watched nationalism and patriotism turn into hate for the "other" whoever that may be in the present moment, whether it be brown people, white people, muslims, mexicans, etc. I've seen the American flag turned into a status symbol, a "with us or against us" logo to be used spitefully against American and "other." I've seen and felt this attitude grow and flourish under eight years of Lord Fucknut Jr and get even worse under Obama. Now look, I'm not defending any politician one way or the other. I clearly hated the last guy for more reasons than simply him being a crooked politician. I don't hate Obama but feel like most before him and probably after him the status quo took place while he lived in the White House the same events would have occurred under any other President. I don't think 9/11 was g.w.'s fault directly as I believe the President has no real power as far as moving the gears of history are concerned. He can sign papers and have someone arrested and probably have someone killed but isn't the one making the demands or paying for them. I will not discuss who "they" might be, that's for another day. However I do believe "they" had a hand in the events of 9/11. I do not deny the deaths of thousands of innocent people or that the buildings were hit with planes and fell. If you lost someone on 9/11 and tomorrow will be a day of remembering your loved ones or honoring your fellow man I'm not stopping you and mean no disrespect. However, I will not be spending tomorrow reflecting on the events of that day. I will not be waving a flag, or posting some kind of flag/eagle/veteran photo on social media either. If you do, that's you. I will not participate. 

The world we live in today is the shockwave from those two buildings hitting the ground still reverberating and choking out our lungs and eyes with thick black soot. The suspicious events raised more questions about the who, rather than the why. The evidence for the plane hitting the pentagon and crashing in PA are weak and thin. The original news footage still exists on Youtube, take a look for yourself and believe what you want, at this point as we're so far past the point of no return it truly does not matter what any of us believe. We're here in this world and it's moving towards whatever goal it was intended to with or without the public. The speedy declaration of war on Afghanistan, the invasion of Iraq and the complete destabilization of that entire region is on the United States of America and the black sickness that we created over there has followed us back to our homes and cities and all you need to do is look at your social media account or the news and if you focus past the subterfuge you will see the true state of things all made up in what the powers that be deem news worthy and what is deemed not. As a nation we cannot come to a consensus on whether or not people being murdered in the street is good or bad. That's where we are. I want to say that it's our own faults but brainwashing takes a long time. You, me and everyone you know has been brainwashed. Distracted into becoming the people we are today. At each others throats at the drop of a hat, but not really. This happens in cyberspace. Our lives have been converted to digital. Technology is good and inevitable but those same people who pulled off the murder of over three thousand people have weened most people off thinking. I am not writing this to be agreed with, I'm writing this because somehow I remain a thoughtful human being. Somehow I have staved off most of the negative vibrations aimed at my head. I'm not totally free of it as most aren't, but somehow I know I am able to look in from the outside. You know who you are out there. Not better, just lucky I assume. This is post 9/11 Earth. 

Those few days of college prior to the 11th are still banging around upstairs, but will soon fade. I can Still remember a little bit of my high school years. My childhood is very foggy, some is nearly hardwired in but it blends and disappears with each passing year. I don't live in the past, as best I can, and I won't ever revert to doing this but I hold these memories dear to my heart because the one thing they all have in common is that they occurred before the entire world went crazy. Before everyone was out to get me and no one could be trusted. Before obvious blatant bullshit was shovel fed into our faces and eaten so willingly. We now live in a time with all the facts and information the world has to offer laying motionless at our fingertips yet we cling to willful ignorance like a life vest while floating out at sea. Tomorrow is a tragedy wrapped in a lie that we're turning into a hamburger and hot dog holiday. In time ALL the facts will fade into obscurity and no one alive will know enough or want to ever question why they get back to back three day weekends in September. Those today who were too young to remember that day or were born after that day will never know a world prior to 9/11. All they see is the anger and disagreement that goes one between people who were there. They see the world on fire but know no other world. They grew up after the most controversial tragedy in the world's history, not because it happened in America and we're American, but because those of us who were here before know what the world was like before and they do not. All they know is that shit is fucked up while simultaneously being the most connected technologically advanced era in human history and they get shit for that. The very devices designed to distract us from that event and everything important since that event distract them in ways I may never understand because I know what it's like to not have them, they do not. This is the state of affairs. The rug was pulled out from all of us, some before they were even born and it turns out it's all our own fault. So, tomorrow morning you'll turn on the television and the reinforcing of how you're supposed to feel about the day will begin. Stories will be retold, events will be omitted, moments of silence will be had and no one will question a thing. Almost no one.