KEEP UNFOLLOWING, I'M RELOADING

1. Keep Unfollowing, I'm Reloading

Bear an endless cup as you walk a line some eight billion deep spilling on each you pass a splash. Ablutions and impositions.

Apologize. Erroneous cleric. Adjunct self-appointee.

Devil's advocate's junior researcher's assistant. Carrier.

AT FRIENDS' END SENSELESS

LICKITY SPLIT INFINITY ON A RICKETY RIDE TO HELL BUY A TICKET DEEPFAKE DIVINITY

Cosmic knots Floating drops dislike drips here's one more: you can keep the tip.

The notion of unceremoniousness conjures an unceremony. And in these unserious times of such grave seriousness . . . The robbing of nest eggs . . .

Conceive the Prose of Crows: Have you ever considered that I'm an imbecile and that this is indistinct from the lorem slipstream of typographic test-text?

2. Splash Waterfalls

For years I've fantasized, not in any positive sense, about the possibility of being shot and killed.

It's happened to people I've known.

Some lived.

One spent her twenties in a nursing home gradually succumbing.

"You don't see it coming."

It's not a movie.

Strings don't rise and swell in anticipation of The Shot.

In recent times, it's been difficult not to wonder about the motivation of a hypothetical assailant.

Seem some likely candidates.

Your skin, the clothes you're in. Your perceived political affiliations.

Random chance and happenstance.

Wrong place, wrong time.

LOOK HERE I'M NO ROOKIE.

I've had guns pulled on me before (and those are just the ones I've seen and known about — who knows what distant crosshairs have been trained from rooftops or windows . . .)

And so just imagine, now.

Because it's happened, now.

Being killed by someone yelling a meme — the contemporary equivalent of "I'm Rick James, bitch!" "Respect my authority!" "Sssmokin'!"

            Blammo.
            Boom boom boom.
            Pop-pop-pop-pop.
            Brakakakack.
            Handheld thunderclap.
        

Done for a kick.

Donezo.

A bit.

Butt-ended.

A joke.

You got clapped the fuck up with a Spongebob switch.

The end of some unknown universe.

There is a sick freedom where nothing means anything and people aren't people.

Any act is excusable.

Justification's irrelevant.

The boredom in the dead, flat, low voice.

Poisoned with screens and irony.

The product of some unknown chat.

A chorus of supporters.

A video, a manifesto.

The pointlessness is the point.

The targeting of children is not an accident.

Children are people with time.

To strike out at them is to strike out at potential itself.

3. The End Product

Alternate Title:

I wrote an essay about a specific act of violence that is no longer making the rounds (bad pun) in the news (bad joke), but as I am not conventionally known as an "essayist" and as no one wants to be stern-und-glum right now I took out like 90% of the words that I'd initially written in service of producing tightly-edited letterform suggestions that can be read →intertextually← by enterprising readers

or

nodded at like big fat word paintings in some lost museum's obligatory ass-end modernist gallery by those ←merely perusing→,

the illusion is yours and its use is your choosing—

█

Video opens. Primitive drawing. Invoking drugs and criminality. Pop cultural. Repellant vocal tics/stims. Irritating. Echolalia. A neatly-printed self-pitying note to friends and family. All-indented and correctly spelled. "Thoughtful," if you will. Deliberate. "I just want . . ." "I just want . . ." Lung health Damaged. Cloaked. It's difficult to ascertain any degree of sincerity about their concerns. Dumps ammo on the notebook. Rare jewels. Violence as currency. "GET FUCKED." Consumer-grade nihilism. Vague anti-corporate sentiment. Signaling. Back-of-the-throat. Dead-to-the-world. Detachment. Incoherent messaging. Self-aware sarcasm. Hair back in two ponytails. The message is meaninglessness, the medium is death. (This again) "To my family, I'm sorry." White tube socks shuffling on warm wood flooring.

4. D.L.L.E. (Repeat 4x to Repetitive Machine Music)

Detonative. Locomotive. Liquid. Explosive.

× 4

5. Some Months Back

I've been called a lot of things.

"Faggot." "Hipster." "Hipster faggot." "Faggot hipster." "White boy." "██████lover." "Girl." "Girl." "You look like a girl."

            Over.
            And over.
            And so on.
            Go on.
        

I've had things thrown out of cars at me.

            Meals and garbage.
            Spreading.
            French fries and shakes.
            Liquids and solids.
        

I understand the extent to which I'm unwanted entertainment.

I don't mean to be.

I don't think of me.

I hate you too.

I don't want to be around.

But, but —

Tonight.

Just tonight.

On Franklin Ave.

Some young fellows threw a cinderblock at me from a car.

And it smashed in the street.

Concrete meeting concrete.

Shattered.

Inches from me.

Pieces.

Cracked.

My end's what could have been,

Could have killed me.

Could have irrevocably altered.

In a wheelchair, retarded.

Something.

Someone.

No one likes to talk about.

No one likes to be alert.

            Instead it fell short.
            I caught up with them at the light.
            Two of them.
            And took the driver's collar in my hands.
            Separated it from the rest of his shirt.
            Torn.
            He made a face.
            Then he peeled out.
            Turned around.
            And tried to run me over.
            To no success.
            As this typing attests.
            Drove off.
            Like a bitch.
        

I've been trying to die a while but not like this.

I want something but this isn't it.

Fifteen minutes later I kept forgetting it.

Fifteen minutes later it was distant anger.

I want the nighttime jasmine.

6. Because I Am Not the Eye, I Am Not of the Body

When I think of destroying the body in whole I feel no great sadness but when I think of individual systems of elements being mangled dismantled or otherwise taken offline it makes me unfathomably desperately sad.

Holistic hatred, atomic love? Feels like my neck's broken. You?