A VULTURE"S VIEW

DYSTOPIA REAL TIME
I walk barefoot down my path. Treading directly on the shards of shattered dreams and thrown away hearts. Broken concrete and rusting girders replaced the forest foliage of many decades ago. There was no war here, wars aftermath is often rebuilt as soon as the peace is made. This dystopian dysfunction is simply a result of the neglect of generations of moved out, removed long ago from the life of "this has become such and so," but not on.

My feet no longer bleed when cut, one needs a heartbeat for that, only a fool leaves their heart intact in the places I wander. It is my thought that powers me, my ability to see and remember a well spun past that has moved future forward to this time of hate and insipid ignorance of man, of people once here, but gone now; yet forever shooting fiery arrows of thoughts they have no honest understanding of, across the wall their past generations built trying to maintain a once was, that can never be regained.

Nothing but nothing can be changed from outside the nightmare we waking walk in. Few are they who are not blinded by the darkness, few are they fearless enough to confront what lay within their own soul.

Those not of the downfall refuse to see. Ignorance is bliss. Ignorance comes so easily to them still kissed with a job, family, hope, depth enough in the pond to freely swim. When the water evaporates they will begin to see their lives were not lived well because of their work done successfully.

God’s approval does not matter, only the one with a neck to nod, matters. Kings, presidents, dictators, parliaments, congresses of peoples. Them at the party sharing cocktails and chewing on the remains of them not invited to the soiree, have nodding necks. Thus it has ever been. Some climb the rubble piles easily for they have created them to benefit themselves, their progeny for a hundred generation out.

Leave God, be God; and man, be man. The two divorced themselves so many millennia ago that they are not even distant neighbors now. You may know God, and God may know you but how often are you asking that being to recreate a time before your sins separated you? What is sin, what are your sins? I have no knowledge of sin. I cannot ask forgiveness for a condemnation some other man said I am doomed to.

A utopian frontier now foreclosed to dystopian panoramas them left out, those whose hearts and dreams litter the path ahead of me. Men of every size shape and color in work clothes, overalls, uniforms, and 3 for the cost of 1 suits, climbing on the piles of rubble seeking gain that never comes to them. These men are dead already even though their fingers still bleed from the climbing.

Women dressed in burqas, Kentucky Derby hats, babushkas, climbing their own rubble piles seeking relief from the pain of the children they have put in the ground, pains remorseless cessation that never comes to them. God’s tears do not matter, they do not water the earth as sacred, only more blood can do that. Women’s tears simply wash the blood away making more room for more carnage residue.

The rubble piles in a gray world of shattered dreams and crushed hearts, the only place where all are upon them are equal. It is a place where few are bold enough to enter willingly to see what we, all of we, have caused to exist on a planet formed for our comfort and learning. My mind is now void of anything but the places my feet tread and walking, walking so long on shards, and shatters, has made me see the unthinkable has become real. Too real.

© M Durfee

7.20.2016

SLUM LIFE

I DIDN’T WRITE IT- MY ASS AIN’T CASHING IT

Waking up treading water in the deep end

surrounded by empty beer bottles

(no corks, no notes), plastic cocktail cups,

a used needle or three, a few condoms (filled & spilled)

and noises of care less parties all around me.

It is interesting to watch what passes as fun for the fat asses

while my legs, arms, and back ache

from trying to swim in my always disturbed shallow sleep.                                     

“Not a Care in the World” is the universal motto in the slums.

Babies dead, old folks fear right, left, ahead;                                               

while the party is never ending, here am I,

just a piece of the pool scum, trending to the middle,

head barely above the water no opinion.

I watch the message scrolling across the pavement

sending more and more dire reports

of continued fucked up flooding

rushing in hell bent on bringing

the broken water main pool

more hood rats shit where I am treading.

Life, it seems should be a flood.

Floods are good, they wash away the blood.

There is no triage here anymore.

It is fully recognized that no matter

whatever message is put forward

it turns to useless endeavor

while them who rule with laws, 

the order and the schools

think they are ever so clever with words of

“we’ll do this, we’re doing that”

when the reality is they pocket the money and do scat

while getting even more red in cheek and nose;

good single malt scotch at city hall;

oh let’s not forget the envelopes

that make them even more fat.

Life downtown is a never ending party,

one could say in the pandering offices there 

living is a constant disco ball.

Politics and preaching are perfect

slum life professions for them with the gift for graft.

I watch them who are human here,

don’t say much though I know the language,

not afraid only tired of the ever rising damage.

Shit going so high that soon enough

it will fill what is now an ever present gray sky

giving off muted, let’s say a slight muted light—

oh crap I have to stop and go dive my ass under.

I see two idiots, no three, ready to have a gun fight—

one last look around before I go down.

Babies on the lawn, check

old folks trying to get warm, check

a couple of dudes working on a car, check

yep stage seems to be ready set.

Time for me to disappear for bit.

The predicted flood

of no one cares about it blood is about to hit.

© M Durfee

4.22.2016

I know many who stop by here want to see a softer gentler side to what I write, but if I did that I would be lying to myself and to you. I refuse to lie. Yes there are crocuses blooming, and trees coming to flower, while the dandelions, and Tiger Lilly's are growing leaves but what I write on is what I am forced to look at, not what I would choose. Yes I could focus on the good, the serene, the transcendent but those are the fleeting sights; flowers die too quickly and a year is long time to wait to see them again. 

These poems categorized under certain tags are documentary of early 21st century urban life in the impoverished parts of almost, if not every, major American city. I could polish the wormy apple but still within, the worms of destruction will be there eating and multiplying. Don't just think I am being hard on Detroit, but look to Chicago, LA, NOLA, all places where the meat and even the fat is taken off the bone before that skimpy bit is thrown to an impoverished population brought up on apathy and gratification of self-first and last.

Respect is a big word down in the slums. I do not know what the fuck context that word, so commonly used, means. I am supposed to respect them who killed 7 children under 6 this year? Cops that never show up? People who literally party until 4am night after night? Them who claim to rule the roost but never even come into the chicken coop? What the fuck is this "respect" everyone is so damned worried about? If what they mean is fear--I am supposed to respect them by fearing them? All I can reply and have on many occasions "bring it, too old to be scared and too fat to run away."

There is a rot crawling on the landscape and after all of my years of writing and seeing it grow with no antidote I feel it has to be chronicled. It ain't pretty but it is real. Very real.

GENETIC MODIFICATION OF SOCIETY

THE GREAT SOCIETY MODIFIED

Living in a GMO neighborhood

where the burned out abandoned houses

grow differently day by day in the fields

that now have a pungent cadaver smell

wafting from the enormous weeds growing there.

It is hopeless to have hope when the genetic strands

know there is no label on the package

wrapping this place so far away

from the growing organic portions that produce profit

for the social chemists that decades ago started the experiments.

Some say there was good intent

only no forward thought to the destruction

the modifications have wrought today.

Born pure I’ve become modified a’ready.

My strands twist and turn chemically away.

Attitudes modified by age and bad air

yet old enough to remember time

before the laboratory opened the doors

to the destructive enhancements

on what had been growing just fine.

© M Durfee

5.17.2015

Do not disparage aging away and death as the work of the Devil, it is the Savior from living the encroaching rot that is eating mankind.--md