con sum er train ing

take the trees and cut them
burn them and you press them
blast into the Earth and
dig dig dig dig dig dig
Haul the ore haul the gold
People dig young and old
split the atom smash it
catch the blast boom boom boom
sell the atom buy it
doom doom doom doom doom doom
wash let the water run
splash let the water run
thirst let the water run
waste let the water run
con sume con sume con sume
boom doom boom doom boom doom
now we trash the plastic
oh the toys fantastic
smoke the Earth smoke the Earth
like crack like crack like crack
there’s no such thing as left
there’s no such thing as leftover
there’s no such thing as leftover crack
crack
crack

Land of Waste

A spoken word poem about my time in Iraq (and after) I wrote and performed in college. – Trentnificent

In the stupid little microcosm in which I exist I wield weapons of technology and balled up fist, and for what?
 
Because I’ve been ostracized and hated then willfully indoctrinated and re-calibrated to respond to stimuli with extremity of violence that leaves no one alive and now I’ve got
Power?
 
Power over the now silent people I’ve murdered to ensure that one cause desists and another is furthered? Maybe we could cut through the distortion, instead of callin’ it killin’ call it late term abortion. Standing over some 15 year old kid, brains all over the block, look what I did.
 
Just how far will I go in a wasteland of morals and desert tribespeople whose stories are orally passed down through centuries father to son, how many stories can I fuckin’ end with a gun (Hollywood told me it’s fun) before admitting that power reproduces in cycles, and my participation reinforces the power of idols?
 
Standing and listening to the binary rhetoric spouted to ranks of young people looking for a check, scanning the faces of impressionable recruits, I hear Obi-Wan say
“only a Sith deals in absolutes.”
 
So what has become of so many cast ballots which resulted in ammo stacked sky high on pallets and shipped to be fired at the poorest of people? Do you really believe that the enemy is evil?
You tell me motherfuckers.
 
Cause I was the one who went over to silence a surge of insurgence with bone splitting speed and commitment to violence based on an undefined need for revenge against
someone.
 
Doesn’t really matter who I guess, ship me out ship me home with new bling on my chest in a plane or a ship or a flag covered box, then have a fuckin’ parade and parade me on Fox and don’t worry about why or the justification just enjoy the sweet satisfaction of your cozy safe nation and know that the people embroiled in the battle are only as real as your burgers are cattle.
 
And the people being freed?
The lucky recipients of gun powder democracy? Yeah they said thanks, the hood is much prettier with soldiers and tanks. Endless ranks of Barneys and Franks, just doin’ a job no need to give thanks for laying your families bodies on planks.
 
Saddam was a piece of shit, no denyin’. But in all his time, never was shrapnel flyin through the cities and towns like it fuckin’ is now, Sunni and Shia strap bombs to their brothers and sisters like BLOW rather than be ruled by outsiders.
Ruled coldly and hollowly by invaders and airspace raiders who take aim at your town and reduce it to craters then hand you a flag all serious and solemnly, this here’s how you trade
Ramses for Ptolemy.
 
Then for me the war is over.
Now I come home and it don’t look the same. It’s America only in name. Balls deep in campaigns of sectarian non-violence, the rich sect complain at the poor sects non-silence. Half of the country is or will be in prison, and access to a doctor is now socialism?
 
What did I pledge allegiance to? Look at your beacon of freedom, work 40 hours and the kids? You can’t feed ‘em. CEO (who has bankers in Sweeden) says that he’ll have to cut hours you see ‘cause part-time gets no health care benefits say the powers that be. Of course, he can’t give up a house or a yacht, summers in Lyon when the Keys are too hot. And the poor folks don’t think that the rich folks still own us, no presents this year kids, the boss needs his bonus.
 
I see it for what it is now, a bunch of greedy bitches. Self-obsessed children with big degrees in business. And maybe that’s what’s gone so wrong with this nation, learning how to fuck people over constitutes an education.

Luminous Beings

Your obsession with metaphysics is off putting,
Dear Poetry, your dramatic egotistical plots
and riddles blot the sky, pillars of equisitely
shaped turds, holding their tinkerers aloft.

We are luminous beings of immortal light
my hairy, Irish ass. I see no holy halo
on a planet packed with savagely selfish,
manicured monkeys in silk pinstripe suits.

I am a brain, a body, a double helix shaped
by generations reaching back to pre-cognition.
A biological pattern, order in the insanity of
physical and chemical chaos, multicellular.

Put your energy, Dear Poetry, into objective truths
which are, unsurprisingly, infinitely more sublime
than the morally muddled musings of ancient
creatures who couldn’t confront the cosmos.

Grand, horrifying, and endlessly irreverent of
the platitudes and prayers putted skyward.
Language needn’t mate metaphysical metaphor
to communicate our communal chorus of awe.

The pastoral predates the predatory pastor, a trope
shapes and shears us like sheep, don’t you know?
On to a new pasture, you peasants and masters!
You poets and bards, I implore, won’t you go?

To the temples of reality, where, Dear Poetry,
The truth is, we don’t glow.

-2014-

Math is Hard, You are Smart

A poem for Katrina, by her Daddy

 

When you were very little,

Less than two but more than one.

You started out by crawling but

You didn’t find it very fun.

Your very first footsteps,

my dear, didn’t turn out well.

You wobbled, shook, and

Down you went. Right on

Your butt you fell.

 

Then a few years later,

When you were just a little tyke,

I picked you up and set you down

On your very first new bike.

You pedaled and you pedaled,

But when you went to turn,

You saw a squirrel and down

You went. A face-full of nasty

Concrete burn.

 

Now you’re such a big girl,

You’re in school and doing math.

I know it’s awfully tempting just

To say “Dad I can’t do this crap!”

But I want you to think back,

To all of those other firsts.

Your busted butt, your road rash face,

and how bad all of it hurt.

 

But you didn’t give up on walking,

and you kept riding that bike.

And now you run so well and

You can pedal faster than light.

 

So when you’ve got subtraction,

And division giving you hell,

I hope you’ll realize that it’s just

Another step in your life’s stairwell.

And just like walking and riding,

Eventually it’ll be part of you.

And you’ll wonder why it seemed

So hard, this stuff that’s so easy

For you to do.

Dale Malloy of Fort Worth Texas Writes a Letter to the God of the Mormons

Dear Mormon God,

According to the internet

You don’t like blacks or browns

You led Joe to the dessert

And you said to build a town

From there you dispatch messengers

On bikes and wearing ties

They smile and act politely

Like a bunch of normal guys

The issue that I have with this

This really isn’t good

Is that they like to knock on doors

In shitty neighborhoods

It was a Sunday morning

The kids were at their mom’s

I hadn’t had a good night’s sleep

In way too goddam long

The doorbell rang like fifteen times

My bare feet hit the floor

Panic in my fuzzy brain

The cops are at the door!

I dashed into the living room

With super human speed

Another ring and a loud knock

I grabbed the coke and weed

I ran back to the toilet

And dumped both sacks in

I stood and watched two thousand bucks

Go down with a spin

Still half asleep and freaking out

I ran without my pants

Down the hall to the back room

And murdered all my pot plants

The doorbell still was ringing

Grabbed pants off of my bed

I peeked outside the curtains

And all I saw was red

I flung the front door open

I grabbed the first one by his tie

I reached back and balled a fist

And smashed him in the eye

I turned to his companion

And grabbed a hold of him

I dug my heels into the doorjamb

And pulled both of them in

I really don’t remember

And that’s a solemn oath

But by the time I came around

I saw I’d killed them both

That’s kind of why I’m writing you

I’m really out of luck

The coke, the weed, and all those plants

Were worth five thousand bucks

Plus the box of trash bags

The shovel and the gas

Add another fifty bones

Your bike nerds cost my ass

Now I’m driving out to Utah

‘Cause your friends cost me my stash

I’m on my way to find you, God

And you’d better have my cash

Sincere about getting my money back,

Dale

2011

The Survivalist’s Son

The Commies never came, dad.

The Ruskies or the slopes.

Now my “better dead than red” tattoo

Draws a lot of jokes.

 

Next it was Al Qaeda,

Then our first black president.

For all you spent on baseless fears

I’m shocked we made the rent.

 

I thought that you’d gone crazy,

But now that I’m a man,

I see that this was just a kind

Of redneck savings plan.

 

The food down in the bomb shelter,

Has all but long gone bad.

But for the place to grow my pot

I’d like to thank you, dad.

 

The big stockpile of weapons

You taught me how to shoot?

I sold it on the Internet

For a big stockpile of loot.

 

So now I’ve got a lot of cash

And I’m always good and high.

Thanks for the inheritance,

You were such a clever guy.

-2010-