Tuesday, November 5, 2024

The American Dream by Skaja Evens

It’s a damn challenge to not give in. Do not give up, either.

Trying to keep it together to appear moderately functional in an extraordinary life in a world that would rather beat you down to keep you beige and mediocre.

The exceptional are occasionally revered until they dare step out of line. Then they are forgotten as quickly as discovered. And attention moves to the Next Big Thing.

Unless you can be exploited for ratings, devoid of entertainment value.
Anything for a quick buck.

My heart hurts a lot, trying to find my own way.
I’ve never fit into the compartment this world demands of me.

The self-proclaimed gurus will sell you something they don’t really have. Dressed up in pretty imagery where you, too, can have the life they advertise for only four payments of more money than you’ll ever see in a lifetime.

Surely your future happiness is worth going into debt for someone else’s half-baked opinions. Just give up anything that makes right now worth living, and you’ll afford the life of your dreams!

While those in power laugh behind closed doors, brainstorming ways to squeeze blood from a stone.

I am in so much pain. But so is everyone else, so who cares, right?
There are plenty that have it worse than me.
Suck it up, buttercup, and fall in line.
You’re nothing special, and if you can’t pick up the slack, we’ll find someone to take your place.

Be that machine cog and be grateful for any morsel of happiness.

What a joke, yeah?

Pay attention to who’s laughing.

--

Skaja Evens is a Best of the Net-nominated writer living in SE Virginia. Her work has appeared in Medusa's Kitchen, The Rye Whiskey Review, Synchronized Chaos, Mad Swirl, Spillwords Press, Ink Pantry, Blue Pepper, among others. Her first book, conscientia veritatis, from Whiskey City Press, is available on Amazon.

Sunday, November 3, 2024

Homo-Studen by Heath Brougher

The Noon Multiverse will continue
multiversing as I sail
with a snail in in a saltine glass
awaiting sapiens to realize
evolution has spun off-hinge
as “survival of the fittest”
has been replaced with
“survival of the most technologically adaptive”—
a void within an abyss—
evolution spun with flights of false fancy—
abstractions of abstractions of abstractions.

I’ll never forget the words “no logic”
are used to build the words “technologically aloof.”

--

Heath Brougher is the editor-in-chief of Concrete Mist Press and former poetry editor for Into the Void Magazine, winner of the 2017 and 2018 Saboteur Awards. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Nominee; he was awarded the 2018 Poet of the Year Award from Taj Mahal Review. He is the author of 12 books and has a new book forthcoming titled "Beware the Bourgeois Doomsday Fantasy." He has spent the last few years editing the work of others but is officially ready to get back into the creative driver seat.