Blood on Our Hands by Damien Ark

with scorched earth unnoticed

putrefied oceans of sludge

boiling into soaring flames

dancefloors become memorials

no more safe places to pray

suffocating with a bag over his head

or a boot on a neck (etc.…)

the dead are your laughing stock

wouldn’t it be funny to entice a war

because it's all a joke to you

here’s the graph to show you this is real

not it’s not. but that livestreamed 

facebook video of a mosque shot up

if only you could VR pleasure overload that shit up your ass or cunt

will my grave

have a swastika painted over it

who will be there

to soak up the blood

and squeeze it back into my coffins

to kiss the forehead of a grieving mother

her son drawn against the wall

who will be there

to scrape up the remains

of brain matter and lacerated flesh

so we continue to pray for rain

in every language with the same tongue

you will disintegrate

like you always do

turn your back

when the finger is raised

there's no forgetting

when nobody had ever cared

and it all happens so fast

before the slate is blown to smithereens

and left to collapse in on itself

totality of permanence is always

a complicated concept for those who

are never affected by it

by those who must learn of it through

bullshit extra-curriculum classes and school books

and when those who suffer ask for recognition

the answer is always no

do you dare to reach for

something fragile that's descending

before it shatters at your feet

as if it were a natural instinct to you

the answer is always no

lucid dreaming could be

more common than existing

when we're obsessively craving

for absolutes, a tinder match

materialism, satin furniture

gelatin anti-aging capsules

a tiny affordable bedroom 

dragon fruit exported from three separate countries

a triple whopper and a twelve-pack of beer 

but besides eternal life,

warm bodies with no souls

we could wake up under

a bodhi tree

we could be living in a simulation

but then what does it matter

what is there to celebrate

the wheel of life

unbreakable petrified wood

a crumbling staircase

this perfect night terror haunting

in which we seek freedom

from our razorfucked twisted minds or

to be ourselves without social prejudice

this corrupted hardware sparking

like a dirty thunderstorm

i think we’re ready to heal now

we could walk hand in hand and

get shot to death and driven over by 

patriots and martyrs 

gold towers collecting and selling the data

we could be living their simulation

but then what does it matter

if all that matters to us

is to fulfill our hunger, desire, fears

we could conquer mars

let this planet rot

and detonate another

we could sandwich all of the trash islands

and bury it on the moon

destitution

gore and soft fingertips

decay down to the cellular structure

destructive energies between two bodies

host, worm, pressure, the worthless creature

burrows into my forehead and rims my eyelids

hatred and violence fetishized

male embodiment, the hand is a bump stock

crushing the core of our corrupt nature

cleansing bullets and ruined flesh

with a smothering blanket of reflection

of love, compassion, empathy

take your tanks to the vigil

rub your face in the blood of these strangers

false limitations like a wet dream in limbo

snapped together, relocate your limbs

virginal and pure like the morning star that you are

nobody could hold that hate better than you

remember what touch is meant to feel like

we're not supposed to act this way

we should know this by now

the answer is always no

the sound of their guitars strumming wildly

mimicking the sound of bullets flying

great-grandma's parched lips singing

a hundred-year-old Caucasus melody

they raced horses while dancing

and taught their children the lute

and accordion and how to fire back

with their tongue, music, prayer

violin strings plucked apart

wooden necks like daggers into throats

a passport to Georgia

a phonograph to Azerbaijan

postcards from Armenia

here is the sound of a million dead bodies

being buried in mass graves

or left to rot in shit

through a choir of children slaughtered

limbs scattered where their songs were born from

listen to the hymn

some refuse to hear it

some refuse to believe it

music and truth buried deep in our dirt

What are your true colors? Which of these examples represents you? An American flag? A confederate flag? A blue lives matter flag? A flag with a lone star on it? A flag with a tank on it? A flag with a snake on it? A blue lives matter flag with a Punisher skull on it? A confederate flag with a blue lives matter flag on it? A nazi flag? A bikini top American flag made in an American prison? A confederate flag over your genitals made by a kid with a gun to their head in a sweatshop? Selling their body to rich American businessmen visiting for a quick venture fuck. American flag pinned to the cashmere suit. Purchasing a Black Lives Matter Bumper Sticker and natural handcrafted bath bombs on Etsy. Purchasing a Youth Large Blue Lives Matter shirt and natural handcrafted bath bombs on Etsy. Will it fit my yet to be indoctrinated son? When he goes to school, will he know which flag is which? I see the American flag. And I see the flag on my shirt. I see the confederate flag on her hat. I see the Trump flag on a barbed wire fence outside the local grocers shops. I see a handmade Trump Confederate flag painted onto a rundown rural Midwest house. The black population in the rundown rural town with the rundown rural Midwest houses - .02%. No flag? Antifa flag?  Do you have a flagpole? Do you put it up and down the way you’re supposed to or do you keep it up in your front yard like it’s just another garden accessory? What do you think about burning flags? What do you think about what happens when a flag falls to the ground? What do you think about people wearing a flag? What do you think the military thinks about it? What do you think about the American flag on the moon? What do you think about the American flag forced down the throats of every country that can be exploited? Which flag do you pledge for? Does the kid look at his shirt, look at the hat, look at the American flag on the left side of the classroom and then the lone star flag on the right side of the classroom and pledge to them all? Or just one of them? Can he decide? When should he stand or sit down? There is no color in any of the flags. There is no flag. There is no symbol. What you conceive of it has been inside you since the beginning of human evolution. You won’t read about that in the Biology books in Texas, kid. Are you a pride flag? A trans flag? A pride trans poc flag? Let’s fight over it. Which is more inclusive? Are you feeling heard yet? Are you feeling included yet? Has queer replaced gay yet? The fuck does any of this shit matter if you’re all shot dead in the same place at the same time? Feeling like a real fucking faggot right now. Can I drive down a neighborhood of confederate flags with a Black Lives Matter bumper sticker? A pride flag on a flagpole next to a Blue Lives Matter flag on a flagpole as a truck drives by with a confederate flag waving in the wind. Is that a religious flag or a nationalist flag? Where does that belong? Not at my dyke rally, faggot. I thought we were on the same side, then you said we weren’t, but now we’re all shot to death. Which flags from which countries do you support? Which do you want to burn? Do you ever buy a tiny pin for your backpack or a shirt of a country you’ve never been to and know nothing about to show your support for them? Would you wear it while sucking dick in front of a mother fucker that’s ready to chop your head off? Fuck it, you’re getting your head chopped off wherever. Which flags do you fear most? Do most flags look the same? There is no color in the flags. There is no flag. Do you let the waste you leave behind represent you? What does representation look like to you? Where did that cloth come from? Where did that hat and that bikini top and that thread come from? Nice sweater. So postmodern and outspoken. Yeah, that represents your personality so well, like holy fuck. You look so good in that. You’re going to get fucked. People are going to fucking love you. Did you write a thank you letter to the eight-year-old girl that made it in a half-flooded garage, emphasizing how sorry you are that she gets gang-raped by her ten traffickers every night? No, take that ugly sweater off. It doesn’t look good on you. Do you ever feel pretty or handsome when you’re naked or do you only have high self-esteem when you’re wearing clothes that represent you? I think it would all look better thrown into the center of the street like the piece of shit it is. Are you protesting yet? Are you dressed for it? One end of the flagpoles from the liberal goes through the eyes of the conservative. One end of the flagpoles from the conservative goes through the eyes of the liberal. The flags touch each other. They form one color. No color. One unified symbol. No symbol. Here it is. The debate’s over. You lose and you lose and you lose. Some of us have lost since we were born, living in a boring cyberpunk dystopian nightmare, and some of us are having the biggest fucking wet dream we’ve ever had before we croak on our last breath. You see a void in it. We’re all apathetic. We’ve all known it from birth. You hate the way things are going, I hate the way things are going, you’re one side, I’m the other, we both picked sides, we both want to see shit fucked up for good, we both want to die. Is it coming quick and heavy like a cock slamming into every hole or slow and painful like a hand over your mouth and the cock thick and long and drilling into you as the blood runs down the rapist's balls? Everything ends here, not for the better, not for the worst, because that’s how we designed it over thousands of years. You can feel it, right? The tower wrapped in cloth will collapse. The bombs will drop. And yet we will build and survive like roaches all over again.