The Landscape

The Landscape | III. It Is Not

“…because then you would know

what even he doesn’t want to know.”

—Gene Brewer, K-PAX

it is not

a barren

blasted rock

cratered by

manmade cataclysm

a cavalcade

a cascade

a thermonuclear

cannonade

a barricade

battered to ashes

a billion broken swords

Odin’s eye gouged by Grammr

a hundred thousand

thunderstruck thorium

landmines laughing

at landsknechts

littering rivers riven to slivers

to bless our silver altars running over

with guts and glory

it is not

a pillar of homegrown

long bones sown

with rage gone viral

a lone lobo groaning

on a fire biting blight

bright in the eyesore

downtown of demon cores

a cherenkov topoff

a toff party runoff

a top boy boiling

a blocked off

gunmetal off-ramp cramped with traffic

anger clamped to the thumbscrew

ruthless gulag work crew crusade

of gruel cruelty renewal—huel and soylent

and soyboy alpha-decay day traders

raking fat stacks from ass-cracks

and discord served coursework sanctimony

sold off for top dollar to fudcucks

and chucklefucks

it is not

a lairds scam spam grease

creature feature creeplord horde

a mandate date night

sexpest patriarch praising

paradox tautologies of

monotone autonomy

a lamb BAYC deepfake

a jailbait grape of apathy

a gangbang grey bar anal rape

of half-remembered

hambone gyve revivals

of liars crying on high

televised financial advice

of ideal slave drivers

the perfect device

of lice, fleas, gangrene, and disease

God blessed Dutch motherfuckers

the husk of humanity on a prayer to Anansi

answered in anger, the right idea

in the wrong century four deep

in eternity reaping black sheep

fleeced, flayed, and displayed

in daylit hate ordained by the state

it is not

an easy pleasey answer

in three trees with a ladder

three tiers of inequality

a mercy for clergy

and the kingpins of the economy

three cheers for iniquity

a thieves cant cancer

a ratfaced chancer

a blind concubine

a blackfaced ramrod

of god’s wine denying

the mainlines lying in lace

graced and gathered

and penetrated interpretations

of illegitimate rape rail

on high methhead hypocrisy

that is isn’t what it is

in alternative versions

inverting the world in Orwell’s

hoarse warning to authoritarians

retorting to the contorted calculus

of lesser evils, those known entities

marshalling the interdependent expense

of wise men’s fears bearing

their bitter fruit decades hence

in pence and pens of men penitent

for their patience and pensions spent

in inventions the consensus of qualifications

contended would end in resentment

of the rising tide drowning

twenty-first century serfs

in history’s recursion with an encore

of Gojira at the mea culpa conciergerie

ah! ça ira! off with their heads

Antoinette and the prized bourgeois swine

overripe for the rhyme of guillotines

in the autumn of hegemons impaled

on the thornbushes

of parasitic amalgamations

of belittled personhood

The Landscape, it is not this

but the thesis of a cynic

a simmering dispensation

of beef frank, pump-action

dissatisfaction distilled

in animus and antipathy

anathema the theme song

of modern society is all i can hear

ringing in my ears­—a tinnitis of

not if i fuck you first

in geoducks and oysters

a grab bag cracked for fistfuls of pearls

hurling sticks and bricks at every

ghost of Christmas whispering words

of wisdom asleep beneath the stump

of the giving tree cursed for its infertility

this ambiguous allegory lost on K and Tyrell

and the tyrant’s blade run through blind ambition

denuded on the cutting floors

of our modern gods of the boardroom

a statement to the status quo no quid pro

only quotas, the quondum quiddity

of a quorum quotient composed foremost

of quotidien quidnuncs, quisquilian quislings,

and quab queans compelled to conquer

a quaintrelle’s querencia by Q-drop conspiracies

offered not the first question

it is the answer demanded of me

in the trial of long knives

smiling delighted in firelight

and benighted backsliding

when crystal shines bright

broken down by brown stains

mixing blood and shit in the gutter

buttering up to the ghosts

of Goebbels and Laventiy

and the steeples of appeasement

which lead lambs screaming

into the silence of Czernobog’s

dispassionate hammers

dispatching les miserables

with the banal office talk

of indignity’s final forms

filed in the boring words

of bureaucratic design documents

detailing medical neglect

and death chambers

and incinerators

blazing again in the when

never again was meant to mention

in detention centres referencing

the backbeat rhythm of barbed wire

and barracks and warehouses

and the sharting monarch

smiling wide the knives

that slice the throats of those

for whom he holds only

the cold contempt

of supremacy and ethnocentrism

it is my mocking scoff

to a wall of talk void of walk

the price of freedom

we are not willing to pay

pitted against

the happy sacrifice

of our neighbours misguided

in Cathedrals devoted

to Two-Minutes of goats

divided from sheep

all too willing to cut

their own homeboys down

to bleed themselves dry

for the shadow price of spite

and violence projected

in their phantasms fossilising

into facts impervious to attack

this is The Landscape

a bleak sea of screams

roiling in my head

and i pen my confessions

in dead weight tonnage

the gross metric of guilt

that binds and bloodies us all

this is The Landscape

a wall of shame

a footlocker of disdain

an inselberg of enmity

this is The Landscape

this is my painting

this is what i see

what i don’t want to