Mike Falconer

Remembered Collapse

In the prelude to collapse
We fetishized our destruction with North Korean paratroop drops,
alien invasion,
and Mayan prophecy
Islam, sharia, and weapons of mass deception.
We feared the reds under the bed
And cigars off the coast of Florida.
We feared disease, but not enough to care
And vaccines, because they might work.
The others, the different, the opposing points of view
All to be relegated, and subjugated, to a dissidence of cognition.
Compromise, idealize, the perfect, and the blameless
All to be demonized and lost in the blindness.

Collapse, when it came, came in the form of no toilet paper, and plastic bags of gasoline.
We handed over the shackles of our manipulation in exchange for cat pictures and remembered birthdays.
Our attention was sold into slavery by our need for connection, and our unwillingness to talk to our neighbors.
We offered our thoughts and prayers and passed the ammunition.
Debate became trolling
To fact check – a lack of a sense of humor.
And we wrung our hands at becoming an also ran
At looking at others with envious eyes
Not used to “it must be nice.”
As the police murdered traffic violators, and children with plastic toys
The Boogaloo Boys and tacticool idiots lay down with agent provocateurs and the KKK.
Cities protested, burned, and looted with outrage
Stoking the fears of white bread and flyover country.
Fake news, fake news, fake news
The alternative facts filling our bubble.

Looking back on the collapse
We squandered good will and power.
Self-interest that should have become self-loathing
Instead became parody, funny until it was not.
We fought over ownership of the flag, used it as a garrote, and a noose.
You cannot see the label when you are in the jar.
Our remembered lies of nonexistent times did nothing for progress,
Or art.
Or literature.
Or politics.
Or journalism.
We murdered the intellectual, drowned them in a sit-com soup
And then bashed in their skulls in with TV dedicated to making idiots famous.
We then tried to destroy television and film with streaming and Logan Paul.
The honest and the decent, only to be recognized in retrospect, and then to still to have their wishes ignored.

Our reality augmented with filters, captions, and emojis.
We sold California to the world via cops shows and talking cars
And then rejected the vision and the dream.
An American dream with ad breaks and sponsorship.
And we bought guns, guns, and more guns.
We bought guns because we were scared
And we bought guns because it was our right
We bought guns to protect us from others with guns
And we bought guns because we could.
We sold our soul to the world
And then spat in their face when they took us at our word.

We cancelled, cancelled, cancelled,
We failed to understand that when we did it, it was justified outrage
And when they did it was cancel culture.
What culture?
We burned away our culture in a crucible of self-righteousness.

We invited this.
Suicidal ideation by a nation in name only.
Apathy to ideas,
Ideas traded for the cult of personality.
Addiction is defined by consequences.
Hope only exists at rock bottom.

Bad Sex

Compatibility is more than your taste in jazz
Wavelength of intimacy
Frequency of past comparisons

A stranger in bed, destined to remain so
Souvenirs to be purged and forgotten about
Flotsam to jettison

Memories of the good times rear with a vengeance
The incapacity of what could have been
Sharp relief of cold reality

The world as it is, a world not to be
Evidence -where none is needed, what has gone is gone
The remains, shit

Unable to compete with perfect timing
And the weight of rose tints
Bad decisions, on top of what we want rather than what we need

Loving someone is not the problem.

Reciprocation is a bitch.

For The Love of Dog

I’m home.

Four legs, a tail, and a nose
A ball of emotion in fur

Just asking to be fed
And a place on the bed

My daily little betrayals – forgiven as always

The joy of an arrival
and the heartbreak of a journey not taken

Their dedication to being there,
only matched by their confusion at a closed door

Their incomprehension when the routine changes

It’s their house, I’m the tenant
I’m the help

But I also play god
And there is worship in their eyes

I’m just trying to be the person my dogs think I am.

A Day to Remember

A bed not of my making
A room sterile
Strangers with kindness
And judgement

An anonymous high window
An air conditioning vista
An uncomfortable chair
and a person I don’t know

The sounds of pain
Not my world, someone else’s problem
Trying to be invisible and anonymous
Dignity left on the couch

Watching meaningless TV
Processing, processing,
Betrayal is a word bandied about
To add to the day I will remember for the rest of my life.

No trust
A reversion to childhood disease
Without the ice cream
Jokes and a personal life stripped away – probably for the best

What is past is questioned
The future is doubt
Alone, guilty, and lost
Trying not to be a cause or a punchline

A choice is given with a side of sigma
The collapsing of a life
The fallout is lives
An accomplice in the hidden is born

A rat in a maze
Pushed by circumstance and a Gordian Knot
This is not a joy ride
But a crossing of a Rubicon

Locked in but resisting the urge to walk out
To find a parking garage
A busy street
Anywhere but with thought and memory or nowhere

Orderly lines and mind altering pills
Community in disunity
Trying to find safety in a safe space
Finding adversity and rules

The separation of days leads to the separation of minds
Shared adversity is now anger and betrayal
That word again
Forever, and silently, accepted

Days turn to weeks
Accusation turns to acceptance
Of sorts
Nothing is forgotten, and words cut with unsaid barbs

When home beckons
And another community of disunity opens its doors
“How’s that working for you”
Frustration and hopelessness

But the sun is shining
It’s Christmas
Does it matter?
There is an end in sight but wreckage remains

Weeks end, and reality, no more mundane, but real just the same, returns
The unsaid remains a storm cloud
And a rejection of one world by another hurts
Much like the acceptance plays out like revenge

The rain eventually came
Like most pregnant storms – the relief was palpable
Moves and changes in purpose
A slow motion disintegration

Between the Lines

The words are few and far
Dance our dance
Not communicating to talk to one another
Over analyzing a like, a love, a care

Pretending to Ignore, what remains unsaid
Interrupted with flashes of honesty, and the ghosts of days past
The lockdown pause; an excuse, or just the world
The loss of traveled moments and FaceTime

As the compartmentalization of lives solidifies
And drifting ships make sail
There is hope in memory, and the delusion of future facts
What is deleted holds no power

What are the games that are played on the other side?
Has discovery led to understanding?
Or does fear lead to presence?
The reality of acceptance is unacceptable

If there is only memory, what need for souvenirs.
Time precedes as always
Wounds heal or fester depending on reading or dreaming
The intangible in-between makes for an uncomfortable companion

Dreaming between the lines

Sick

At home, but the stranger
Unwelcome in a safe space
Commute from bed to couch to bed
The fears
irrational
of permanence.

Eat to feel better, only
No guilt or rules
In praise of best laid plans
Masks cast side
Raw behavior exposed by misery and self pity

Wasted time and wasted sleep
A battle lost in the war of productivity
No joy, no accomplishments
An ever shifting palate
To match an an inexhaustible need to snooze.

The shame of work rotting on the vine
Left for later or left for others
Fear of being less than a participant
Of being just a spectator, and not a good spectator at that.

There is no nobility in sickness
Kept from view and experience
Detritus of disgust and revulsion
Pharmacological tic-tac-toe
With a chaser of “drink more fluids.”

Sick of being sick
Of being an outsider stuck inside.
A life to be better lived in better times
Self indulgence is the last refuge
But just as lacking in compassion

Intellectual pursuits become flim and flam
Parties of a lack of partying
Fools gold of measured behavior
Awaiting a return that is a distant land
A mirage of how things used to be

Another day ticks across
Reducing time to events rather than hours
Memory blended before memories ended
Like the fading of illness
More than the return of wellness

Dead Computers

The hopes and dreams of fantasy realms
Full of un-potential
Snake skin remnants of working lives
Now just sharp edges and dirt

Dead computers; totems of a different age.
Relics of an hour ago
Forgotten exuberance transferred like data
Rehomed, like the homeless

Value only in magic
The house lights glare of “time to go home.”
Heavy metals, plastic, and silicon
Toxic in death, like in life

Dead end portals
Awash with loss and age
Lives approximated and abandoned
The saddest of detritus

The once prized, now less than forgotten

Fracture

Words have power.

Meaning.

Consequence.

The dialog becomes about ownership of facts

Our facts versus their facts

Their source versus ours

Is trolling, to question and debate?

Since when did “I think you are mistaken,” become “how dare you interact?”

To fracture a society, is to disagree not about fundamental principles of what is right and what is wrong.

But to disagree on how, or if, to discuss them.

To argue over the appropriateness of citing a source

Or one’s willingness to be blinded by belief.

Ownership of bias

Emotion.

Truth.

A Friend on Facebook

A friend told me of crying, fearing for her life, over being arrested for a broken tail light.

A friend told me of losing followers over her support for the killing to stop.

A friend told me of the fear of the violence reaching her business and of searching for a plan.

A friend told me of watching demonstrators being tear gassed on the Strip.

A friend told me of strangers cleaning graffiti, from stores during the day.

A friend told of the police attacking a peaceful demonstration so that the President could have a photo op.

A friend told me that from their position of privilege they could not possibly understand, but that they would still stand up and support.

A friend told me of threats of violence and rioting over twitter, and of how they were scared.

A friend told me that white men with guns in a government building protesting the lack of a haircut was not the same as black men rioting over a lack of hope, a lack of opportunity, and murder due to indifference.

A friend told me of their broken heart.

A friend told me that posting on social media was not enough, and to f*cking do something.

A friend told me of art being looted.

A friend told me of police taking the knee in solidarity.

A friend told me of police driving into protestors.

A friend told me of buildings burned to the ground, of people shot, and stores looted.

A friend told me protestors protecting an officer separated from his team.

A friend told me that looting and burning of property was just a crime.

A friend told me that the cost of peaceful protests was football careers, ridicule, and a lack of change.

A friend told me of civil war, marshal law, and the national guard.

A friend told me that they are emotionally drained.

A friend didn’t have to tell me that black lives matter.

The Toxic You

I thought I knew what being around toxicity was like.

I was wrong.

Toxicity, for those that have not tasted it does not taste like poison.

It tastes like nectar. It is oxygen to a drowning man.

If you have not been there, you don’t know.

You can’t.

It blinds the senses, rewrites your thoughts, changes your environment.

Facts don’t matter, to either side. What matters is the distortion field. The alternative reality created by people with twisted perception.

Was I also toxic?

Almost certainly.

Both sides went into this with our eyes open and plucked out our eyes in the process.

I can feel a piece of myself dying, as I lose myself in someone else.

It is the nagging doubt, the itch you cannot scratch, the slow death of one’s identity and soul.

Toxicity is the last hit of smack before the promise to quit, huddled in a city center shop doorway.

Toxicity is a shot whisky in your car at 10AM in a parking lot.

Toxicity is the entire tub of double fudge ice cream, eaten in a single sitting, on the couch, with a spoon, and after dinner.

What is often forgotten is that the lack of toxicity does not mean that a healthy world view is left.

What is left is a hole.

A void where personality, interaction, and what felt like love

lived.

Do they think they are toxic? Are people just people?

Like mixing ammonia and bleach, some things just don’t go together.

And like chlorine gas, we drive others away.

We can’t be told what everyone else knows.

“But…”

there is always an excuse. A reason why reason does not apply.

At rock bottom, all one can see are stones.