Squids For Sale

Behold the detonation of consciousness at dawn. This poem is a corrosive sprint through an urban landscape, where the speaker's internal volatility—the "kerosene rustling in the meow"—serves as the necessary fuel for absolute clarity. It rapidly transitions from the apathy of the morning commute to a shocking, final philosophical conclusion. The poem posits that in a world governed by cold, inescapable violence, the most brutal act of all—a shotgun abortion—becomes a perverse, life-affirming gesture of "preemptive grace." The Kerosene Fuck coffee eyes, hands-in-pocket mornings, the slow, stumbling descent down the stairs before the sun has earned its title. Thoughts tumble, the unspent currency of the night. I run now, shedding the drag of those thoughts, down the cold concrete stairs, feeling the kerosene rustling in the meow—that low, charged, animal fuel....

Behold the detonation of consciousness at dawn. This document is a record of psychic endurance against the absurd repetition of military bureaucracy. It charts the narrator's prolonged purgatory in naval bootcamp's holding status, where physical failure was met with an endless, cyclical demand: "run." The narrative escalates from the silent trauma of standing at attention to the ultimate, ironic truth: that the system rejected the speaker based on metrics of land (running), even though their true competence—in water—was flawlessly proven, permanently isolating the body from the social world it sought to rejoin. The Litany I. The Static of Attention I stood in the office at rigid attention, a vertical corpse against the bulkhead. Sweat crawled down my nose, thick and saline. My shirt, meticulously buttoned, hung saturated, the damp heat clinging to my midsection. I...

Behold the transmission of revolutionary fury across the void of generations. This poem is not a chronicle of birth, but a detonation, charting the instantaneous transfer of anti-systemic rage from an incandescent mother to her newborn child. It frames the act of creation not as a beginning of innocence, but as a calculated act of war against the socius . Here, the birth canal is a forge, the doctor’s hand an instrument of institutional baptism, and the mother's whispered covenant is the true and final manual for manipulating the world, passed down in a single, unyielding grip. Inherited I. The Source And by God, if she wasn't the single, fiercest lil' ball of madness. So full of FUCKTHEWORLD that the anger in her veins glowed in the dark. Then she procreated. And Boom. Nine months ceased. The flesh was wrapped in the closing birth canal, bathed in the primal, deep, goo...

Welcome to the shattered mirror of shore leave. This poem captures the visceral whiplash of a naval deployment—the sudden, unstable release from the ship's ordered chaos into the chaotic freedom of a foreign port. Set in Suda Bay, Crete, the speaker filters the cultural spectacle of European Halloween through a lens of cynicism and existential fatigue. It is a chronicle of permission granted by the military to externalize the internal damage, where the search for "pretty British bartenders" and "giant glass boots" is a desperate, temporary attempt to reterritorialize desire before the anchor is weighed again. Off-Duty The bus shuddered, climbing from the ship toward the city. Jimmy smashed the small flea against the windowpane—a tiny, decisive execution. I almost offered the reminder: God is watching,and shrooms don’t help the beer go down. This isn't Sp...

What happens when physics breaks down under the weight of sheer will? This poem is a volatile philosophical rant, a series of non-sequiturs that defy religious dogma and scientific law through a single, impossible act: walking on water. The speaker treats this miracle not as a demonstration of faith, but as a psychic breakdown—a forced rejection of gravity dictated by a mind pushed past its breaking point. It is a fragmented, dark meditation where the divine, the physical, and the traumatic merge into a single, terrifying equation. The Surface I walked on water to prove a theory, yet the audience was absent. Smiling is not a symptom of happiness, but the grimace of a god who forged a world beyond his own calculation, now uncontrolled. I walked on water because gravity is a latent segment of the mind, a fragile discipline that collapses under pressure. Mass distorts volume—the truth...

The noise was cheap static, but the price was absolute. This poem captures the precise moment the military machine claims its property, using a major league baseball game—the ultimate symbol of American civilian complacency and summer leisure—as its hunting ground. It is a cynical chronicle of illusion giving way to brutal, instantaneous reality, charting the transition from the desperate assertion of flesh in a bathroom stall to the cold, structured discipline of a white bus, all set to the soundtrack of adolescent anxiety. The Seventh Inning: Hostage Exchange I remember the first hour of the setup. It began at a baseball game, South Side, on U.S. Cellular Field. The White Sox were doing their ritual. We weren't watching. The noise was cheap static. Maddox, oblivious, was screwing his girl in the third stall. A desperate, final assertion of the flesh. Jensen, smiling, chatted ...

Listen for the sound of silence—the thunder of unbeing. This poem descends into the fetal darkness, giving voice to a potential life violently excised not by external force, but by the cold, sovereign will of the host. Adopting a tone of mythological grievance and sensory overload characteristic of Plath, the speaker confronts the incomprehensible act of self-erasure. It is a terrifying epic of molecular betrayal, where the promise of a universe is negated by a "shutter of light," leaving behind only the profound confusion of a consciousness that existed solely to be unmade. The Unmade Star Part 1 : The Wreckage of the Womb Confused aborting smiles, a distant, watery glee. I was not at the clinic. No steel, no sterile gleam for my unmaking. She took it upon herself, a sovereign will, a god in miniature, to disappear me. Not a whisper of my name in waiting, no future tense...

Listen closely, and you will hear the low, metallic hum of true naval service. The speaker juxtaposes a single, minor injury sustained on the messdeck—slicing canned ham—with a civilian's past critique of his "soft" hands. The resulting tone is one of earned, weary cynicism, where the physical marks of service are recognized as the product of "sanctified duty" in food preparation, not heroic combat. It is an ironic salute to the lowest, most persistent form of necessary labor. Canned Meat I earned a Purple Heart—for ham —slicing canned ham during mid-watch prep. The wound was deep. Not shrapnel. Just pork, chopped, and processed. I still hear that civilian judgment, years before the fleet. "Let me see your hands," she said. "Soft, like you haven't done a day's work." A clean hit, drawing blood years later. Now I have sailor's ...

The greatest conflict is not behind you, but within the sheer, terrifying expanse of the ordinary world. This poem is an epic command issued by the seasoned Self to his younger, newly-civilian counterpart. It is a clarion call to abandon the rigid, hyper-controlled mechanisms of naval life—the constant monitoring of one's own cadence and the obsession with documentation—and to confront the immense, unmapped territory of freedom. The journey begins not on the sea, but in the absolute necessity of lifting the gaze from the self and embracing the chaos of the surface. The Vigil of the Shore: An Epic Admonition Don't look down. There are horizons to capture beyond the cadence of your feet, or the meagre script you write—this poem— presenting the false, solitary sea of a path you claim less traveled. Don't look down. Behold what is true—the wide, unmoored world. See what nee...

The world is a stage, but this chronicle is rendered in the cold, black ink of an auditor's grief. This obscure lamentation transforms the domestic sphere into a Jacobean tragedy, dissecting the violent, contradictory life of the Father. The monologue treats memory not as nostalgia, but as a forensic examination of generational abuse, where every object—from the blue truck to the unused paint set—is a sealed exhibit in the ledger of a dynasty built on madness and shame. The Tyrant My father, the factotum's shade, did pace a hundred leagues For whim's scant favour, yet did cleanse his chin each sun, Ere his blue tumbrel—that foul Ford—did snatch him from our gaze. I watched, too slight to span the cistern's edge, a changeling mute, Scrying the fixed, grim rubric of his stern egress. My father, the subterranean artificer, did toil below, Grinding the root's sweet ...

Every crisis is a failure of quarantine. This poem examines the specific moment of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, framed not by high emotion, but by the narrator’s detached, clinical memory analyzes this traumatic event with cold precision, focusing on the mechanical failure of the body and the ultimate futility of the violent gesture. The emotional horror is transferred entirely to the other person, confirming the narrator's ultimate self-imposed isolation. Engineered When I put the gun into my mouth, I thought I was defining the perimeter. I thought a new trajectory opened up. If she could only see her face. It was like someone had flayed the skin off her leg. Her safety pin eyes— a failure of containment— closed up. She was the collateral damage. She was about to scream. I stopped her. A courtesy. And flash. The back of my head opens up. And splashed on her right cheek— bi...

The scar tissue is the only honest witness left. The act of "not looking up" is recast from youthful rebellion into a hardened, pragmatic survival mechanism. The narrator views his world through the clinical lens of his profession, where abstract hope is replaced by the cynical endurance of bureaucracy and the inescapable noise of past clients and unresolved pain. Beyond the Old God The scar tissue tells me: Don't look up. The teacher's name, the classroom's wall— pale and blank— They refuse to inspire, but the budget never moved. To look up would be to breach quarantine. Connect with the raw, chaotic noise of the Them—the endless ones— still screaming when the phone clicks dead. Religion sets limitations. It gives us parameters. Beyond the old God, anything is possible... and I learned that lesson in the wake. Just keep your eyes on the waterline. Listen to t...

Don't mistake the world for a poem, kid. The world is a battlefield, and sentimentality is a weakness that gets you killed. The advice cuts through teenage melodrama, reframing every failure as a lesson in courage, and the practical demands of genuine human engagement over artistic pretense. Shrapnel You’re still talking about that paper bag. The clock hand keeps spinning—that's life, kid. Stop looking at the dial. You dwell on her hand, her hand on your shoulder. She never knew what that warmth cost you. You thought her kindness was a cure. I told you, you confuse things. You called it stopping the gangrene, so you sat down and wrote a poem. You wasted days. Days. Trying to find the perfect word. Metaphors bursting? I've heard the real noise, son. Don't tell me about bursting. You finally worked up the grit to deliver it. Wrote it on a paper bag. You thought that m...

Love isn't a crash; it's the aftermath. The narrator processes his emotional life—past intimacy and present trauma—through the cynical, sterile lens of military procedure and professional diagnosis. Love is recast not as an event, but as the enduring, paradoxical state of perpetual, conscious survival following irreparable damage. The Aftermath Woke up cold in my chair, again. My machine has no answer. It just runs the clock down. Love isn’t a car crash, son. Love is the impact you walk away from— the sound of your own skull hitting the airbag at fifty. Glass shatters; you don't feel the cut then. The hurt comes later, the desperate, useless need to suture the things that won't mend. My therapy notes glow hollow. There's more silent space between the copper wires and the logic board than there is between the impulse to help and the dead weight in my fingertips....

Every ideology—even the idea of God—is just a failed anesthetic. This text is not a search for faith, but a sustained, cynical assault on the divine as a cultural and psychological construct. The concept of "GOD" is brutally degraded, juxtaposed with the visceral banality of human suffering (a teen suicide attempt, plumbing), and then subjected to rapid, contradictory negation. The resulting portrait is a deity that is nothing more than a malfunctioning, pathetic machine that cannot maintain the illusion of reality. The Origin of the Worm And GOD is the unthinkable dark ceiling in the black room, closed by doors, broken like the shattered bulb. The sixteen-year-old infant girl who slashed her wrists in the number two stall of the girls' lavatory. GOD is repair, the plumber fixing the mind’s pipes, unplugging the drain of the brain. GOD is mechanical failure masqueradi...

Authority is a joke, and every desk is a target for beautiful vandalism. This text captures the distilled essence of punk rebellion: a meaningless, aggressive act against a symbol of conformity (the bobblehead/Vallicelli) is immediately followed by a frantic, sexualized panic. The poem operates on two modes of aggression—petty, declarative defiance and chaotic, urgent desire—collapsing them into a single, visceral moment of anti-establishment mania. The Bobblehead I liberated Vallicelli’s bobblehead. Dead plastic weight. Probably his favorite tie. I put it back on his desk, with a Post-it note that shouted its existential truth: “I EAT SOULS!” A clean hit. An intervention in the corporate larynx. Vallicelli, you are meaningless. Go tell your wife. NO TIME! This is not a manifesto, it's a decision. Take off your pants! She is getting away! The pursuit is the only truth left. Go....

All skin is a fragile boundary waiting to be breached, and the deepest ecstasy is found in the wound. This text transforms a moment of intimate contact into an act of grotesque, philosophical violation. It is a descent into the body as a site of sacrificial art, where the narrator seeks not union, but the horrifying knowledge contained within the subject's disassembled form. The transgression is an explicit act of defiance against a structured, moral universe, culminating in a chilling, objective presentation of detached human matter. Midnight She dragged her hair back. Her fingers became part of my scrawl— These words holding the NOW in the constant, a scripture etched onto the present moment. The river of her skin, dimpled and razor-soft. I thought to brand her neck with my print, warping her eyes and lips. The midnight design etch-a-sketching stars— mapping the void onto her...

All emotional communication has stalled, leaving the self fixed and agonizingly exposed. This text is a spiraling confrontation with a desperate need for connection ("Annie") that is constantly sabotaged by toxic self-hatred and corrupted memory. The scene is one of immobilized anguish, where every attempt at catharsis is met by cold alienation or the mechanical demands of the subconscious. The journey is internal, moving from the physical entrapment of the "chair" to the final, existential desert of "smoked to glass." Geometry And I need to talk to Annie. Impaled on a dog-chewed chair— The fixed point of failure. Wonder if she cares. The question is a broken clock spring. Sour menthol eyes, and across the table, memory: Bitter self-hate. Second base. Third base. The whole history is a compressed, greasy set of ruined coordinates. I pass the cold movie...

Grief is a bullet hole you can't clean, and the truth is just cold silence. This text captures the suffocating reality of a life violently ended, viewed through the narrator's adolescent paralysis and existential dread. The sequence is defined by stark, unromanticized pain and a furious refusal to engage in false comfort. The final silence of the deceased and the observer's subsequent immobility expose the absolute failure of human connection and the chilling proximity of the final, decisive exit. The Absolute Failure Her mother’s boyfriend killed himself three days ago. The sound of his last thought was inside my head— a clatter like loose teeth in a tin cup, a desperate, accelerating beat. I walked five miles toward the next town. The world kept spinning, but I stopped. She cried when she told me. I sat in the diner booth, the vinyl cold. Fluorescent tubes hummed a wh...

Every time the TV flashes, another piece of your soul dies in a clean, well-lit studio. This text transforms a mundane action—a staring contest—into a profound and humiliating confrontation with an inanimate object (the tissues) and the indifferent female presence (the girl). The extreme brevity highlights the narrator's existential fragility: his self-worth is so low that he defines his failure not against a person, but against a disposable commodity. The silence of the girl at the end confirms the absolute insignificance of the narrator's entire, failed "contest." Defeat I had a starting contest with a box of Tissues. The perfect, blank surface. The silent, manufactured Other. I was trying to hold my ground, to prove the volume of my wanting was real enough to matter. The Object won. The cardboard held the gaze. Facticity proved superior to consciousness. My att...

Every object in this room is a weapon, and every action is a calculated act of corruption. This text frames a tense, intimate encounter where the narrator is already retreating, leaving only fragments ("what was left of me") for the consumption of "She." The objective, clean imagery is twisted by a narrative of patient, willful destruction—the total consumption of an innocent symbol (the happy duck) as an aesthetic, perverse project. The discovery of crayons at the end is the final, pathetic affirmation of arrested development and an inability to deal with the adult corruption observed. Happy Duck I sat across from her. Avoiding her Porcelain Eyes—pure, glazed, unblinking. And sugared thighs—a false promise, a trap. She leaned forward in her chair. The movement was precise. Propping her chin with her fingers, elbows to the table. Facticity: geometry of desire. L...