Remember: you heard it here first

YOU WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE DEAD WHEN:

- you can't remember the last time you did something new
- the world outside seems dry, unfocused and sterile
- you are content to see the same people and do the same things that you have been seeing and doing since when you can't remember
- you're always eating or drinking
- you look at everything and everyone with a cold, critical, cynical eye
- you're always trying to think inside your boss's head and do what he would have you do
- you let things break and devolve without doing anything to fix them
- you don't even notice the weather
- you catch diseases and don't try to cure yourself of them - you keep them and sustain them like pets
- you start laughing at things that aren't funny, just to give the impression that they are
- you start turning off electrical appliances that don't even belong to you, whether or not they are in use
- you can't feel your upper body
- you make sure that all doors are safely locked
- you try not to make suspicious contact with children
- you look at the people you used to admire and call them idiots under your breath
- you have no time for women
- you have no time
- you're always counting your pennies
- you watch your back all the time
- you get a kick out of buying something, no matter what it is
- you don't have the energy to listen to any music
- your shoes are always polished
- your neatly arranged ties are all drab in colour
- you can't wait for your day to be over before it has even begun
- you check the news at every available opportunity
- you complain half-heartedly about politicians
- you start to dream about what you could have done with your life
- you are always clean-shaven
- you only get erections when you want to
- your fridge is empty and there are cans and dirty laundry all over the floor
- you have no memories - be they happy or sad
- you start making a habit of going to church once a week
- you go to the gym to trim your gut, or to do your damnedest to
- you speak passionately about things that don't mean anything to you or to anybody else
- your music is always at a respectable and conscientious volume
- you find yourself smiling when saying something that is deeply important to you, that you are really angry about

---

Able to turn the weather with a thought.
Pure by no fault of his own, he is shunned as he shuns
Even the mosquitoes come nowhere near him, saving their deadly, life-giving gifts for others more deserving

All is balance, in redistribution.

Some see it as a tremendous curse overshadowing the lives they would fence off and have as their own for eternity
He sees it as sacred relief; his own fate over which a billion nemeses would fight to the death, is the curse of being apart, lamented with every breath that is drawn in, that is expelled having performed its function with no detriment to either pristine environment.

Take this as the lesson of a life led in lament.

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One of these days you will ask of your body some function or other, and nothing will happen. Then you will realise that you are somebody else. You will look at someone's hand and you will try to lift it to scratch someone's nose but it won't work.

You will not give up in despondency though. You know from past experience that there are certain tricks to master, different indirect methods to assert you will and manipulate the surrounding biology to suit its needs.

You will look at someone's body until it feels an acute discomfort, until it succumbs and eventually in frantic circles of actions hits upon the one required to turn off your terrible stare.

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A tingle in the fingers after the hands have spanked together to kill the flakey gold wingrush of the moth that might otherwise have lived to proliferate and leave its all-consuming spawn in my clothing.

I'll admit though that perhaps the incident might have been avoided had I not left the clothes liberally adorning the carpet, as is my usual habit.

So we create the conditions necessary for the pest species to flourish, complain vociferously upon their inevitable arrival and scrabble to an ugly clampdown that could have been avoided by careful maintenance on a regular basis.

The pests are a direct manifestation of our inner degeneracies.

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Learning Helplessness

The way dogs are disciplined into an abusive family.
Punished again and again until it loses all meaning or relation
To their action, but rather to their PERSON.
They learn a new mode of existence - Doing Nothing
In the hope that this will spare them the next beating
They are fully trained. They are submissive.
This should sound familiar.
We've all been kicked in our formative years.
Over and over again with all reasons witheld.
So we learn to bring our master's slippers and to wag our tails
And look on our own desires with deep suspicion and distaste.
Just look how irate and dismissive the holders of power become
When confronted by some creative impulse they have no control over or experience of
And you will appreciate all the more these vents for their scarcity and import.
And these power relationships are everywhere.
Our gods are there to be loved and FEARED.
We must follow their strict example to the letter
Or be bitch-slapped again by their priests into the proper behaviours.
We must SUBMIT.

Maybe poetry is nothing if not a dialogue between consenting subjects.

We don't give thanks for the witness of our environment.
We crawl away to our corner, turning it into our 24hr a day temple to squalor and depravity
And when we DO venture beyond its confines we sniff the air like sewer rodents with suspicion
Never to acknowledge the spirits that guarded our stay, even laying on a resplendent display of welcome when all past behaviour suggested its irrelevance to us late-homecomers. tsk.

And the fundamentals have come to the fore, into their own in order to validate,
Consolidate the lack of critical thought enforced on the populace for profitability.
In a world where men never grow up, reflection, dispassion, empathy count for nothing.