it is hard for me to admit … i have no stories to tell … only scattered brain flatulence with the same day to day recessary ratio … for health they say … i believe in non-belief and potential and that is all … paradox prone as i am … is action as necessary as life? … it is always lacking as my precieved intentions … an antipode of afterthought amusement … slyly fucking up right and left so there is no suspicion or confusion of humanity… just quiet quivering thigh … painfully aware of the space and my personal coordinates inside … surrounded, not surrounding … that there is separation no matter how hard i clutch skin and your guiding arm that fell away long ago … there is pain when i realize i am standing straight and walking … but it is on a foundation of mystic ghosts and mysteries i could not even explain to myself …
let alone you … what is comfort to me? and that is discomfort … that i need to be dissatisfied because simply that is inexplacably who i am … no one has to understand for it to be as it is … it no longer bothers me as in the adolescent wonder why … i still wonder why, but with more conviction that it is the questioning more than the product answer … i question you because it is what i do … i’d rather you slightly ask yourself than answer me …

i cannot remember science but i can live in it … just as poetry is experience it is also preternatural and speed conscious … some say poetry is life … i think life is poetry … an essence of the rhyme and truncated, pinpoint thought memory … i learn today, but silently … good vocalists have also been able to drink water while dummie talking and i am not prey …. not as much as i used to be

and the blue nights would light up like fourth of july fire works on hype days of lore … long ago like 90s fashion … this is film, real delicate silver gelatin print, digital oblivion … this is history before my eyes … and they were beautiful lights against the horizon cloud lines… i believe, you see, i believe in things … but brights lights in the sky aren’t always fireworks of independence and numbers can mean human lives on the tv screen … i sit in blanket comfort distance … still cold as if on the melting ice polar … opposite ends of the earth … refrigerated crisp and ready for years of storage .. they say a week can be productive in war … we can get a lot accomplished with thermostat ideology … technopoly … smooth aerodynamics i always ran my hand over on those new cars … fast and furious, furled and nauseous … i rock back and forth as if the earth were shaking and it is … there is awe and i remember a promise once that we would always be looking up at the same sky … that sapphire, midnight 30 sky … i suppose skies are actually different and some atmsopheric discharges are authentically Iraqi … i ran outside to see that promise in my sky, that same apocalypitic flight, that same invasion glow, that firework destruction, the green background blur of cities against orange fire … yet all i could see was a sheen of empty speckled black lying … it is blank and will not tell me if it believes in anything anymore …

KENT STATE : THE DUAL ROLE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS
Protest Student
It is my first amendment right to protest and assemble peaceably in a public area. The policemen and guardsmen’s job is to protect its citizens, but instead it has killed them. America was founded on these rights of the individual citizen to have a voice if he/she does not agree with their government or government’s actions. If I do not protest and stand up for my constitutional rights, then they are dead documents. They mean nothing without action. The government has overstepped its place in American society and is forcing people I know to go to a war it does not belong in and that its citizens are against. Because this is a democratic nation, supposed to be run by its people, how can the government and its leaders not listen to us? This is the reason why I stand against this war, and I have the right and the moral obligation to protest and if necessary riot against these governmental decisions. As Teddy Roosevelt once said (approximately) a democratic nation that does not question its leaders and no longer actively and public takes a role in political decisions has failed as a nation and as a people. I am going to stand up for what I believe in. This war in Vietnam is wrong and fueled by governmental agendas not in the interest of its people. That is why I am at Kent State today, raising my hands to the sky and shouting obscenities at people who suppress us. The guardsmen have overstepped their position and are no longer protectors of the state that is the people. They are little dolls on strings moved by a government that is one step closer to tyranny. That is why I throw rocks at them and that is why I yell at them. I have more of a right to be here than they do. They should not be here, if they are not going to do their jobs. It seems they know they are above the law as they turn on us, rightful citizens of the U.S., and fire. This event at Kent State, the brutal and unprovoked attack on innocents is just one more reason why our government is going down the wrong path. Not only does it send its children away (people the same age as me) to fight in Vietnam to die for no apparent reason, likewise for no apparent reason —except hate—it has fired on its children in an educational setting (a college) making us martyrs in a war that isn’t ours. It seems the government enjoys killing its future. I think I’ll go throw some more rocks at those f***ers. Every little bit counts.

National Guardsmen
I believe I was picked to be here today in a crowd with all these yuppies. Why do these young kids think they know everything? All their protesting is tearing at the seems of our nation. If they don’t want to be a part of it then they can go some place else. All protestors actions are violent and disturb the peace. We are already at war, why do they have to make things worse? Youthful arrogance fuels this conflict. They have no respect for authority and the law of the land that protects them. What would they do without the government they spit on? They take it for granted like most their age. They’re ruining the face of this nation and making my day hell. I am just doing my job, abiding by orders. They have no right to throw things at me and yell at me. How dare them! They’re breaking the law and I must uphold my principles, too. I’ve been trained for this, I am in the right, I have the law by my side. I can’t them think they’ve got the best of me or my superiors. I know how to show respect to authority. I work hard for what I have and the government has always been there for me. They think with all their “constitutional rights” talk they can cause violence and riots in the streets. They just use that speech to justify their law-breaking. I can’t let them make a fool out of me or the government I represent. I voted for Nixon, damnit! If they think the silent majority of decent, hard-working older folks is going to just stand by while they overturn this nation, they have another thing coming. Our voice will be heard, too. I am a law-abiding citizen, doing my duty for America, something these yuppies know nothing about. And they keep throwing stuff at us! What idiots, I’ve got a gun in my hand, you morons. What disrespectful dumbies! There is a reason why I’m armed, you know. To protect the peace, uphold America’s laws. What I wouldn’t give to pop one of those suckers in the eye. I’ve been standing here all day taking abuse. Don’t they know what pressure we’re under? Do they even care? Probably not. We’re marching away from yet another student protest, standing in perfect formation even while they try their best to bring us down, the institutions of America. I feel like I’m an extension of this and have a larger purpose in mind. But wait! I heard something, something’s going on behind us! I think we got the order to fire, I don’t know for sure. I can feel the adrenaline rush of fear and excitement. I’m turning without even thinking about it, raising my gun to my shoulder in practiced calm. I’m trained for this, finally we‘re doing something about these demonstrators. They’ve gone too far. Here’s one for the silent majority of America.

but it really is all right, isn’t it? everything is okay now …

within the enclosure of darkened theater nights and familiar dark blue doorways … i watch with hesitant emotion … hiding in dark cloth, an easily tilted hat that hints at my strange psychology with this town … personal identity is complicated at this hour, where i exist as an entity in a crowd, rather than an individual in a room … something i must always point out to myself … that i am removed here and i do not belong … i insist to myself their simple ways are not a part of me and never were … ridiculous comparisons of personal talents and present conquests swirl together with the cheap creamer, dissolving in a caffienated wonder of insecurity … i am wondering if this small town air is too light for me or too heavily a past closet skeleton, waiting … too familiar and subconsciously buried on nights like this very one … a necessary precaution for young girls: strategic hands over skirts, covering places fiercely between my thighs, i have more here to lose than most … where the air is so weighted in expectation and a lingering scent of a deterministic future … predictability … she will marry, have two children, inherit her father’s cornfields, so on and so forth … but there are still dreams in this room … sparkling eyes glance back and forth as a mother’s child sings in mediocre flashes of confidence, sterile movement in glitter dress … she is bare to me even beneath her clothing on that stage … her nervous hesitation reflects my own here in the viel of the crowd … we both had something to prove to these village people at one time or another … i remember her from past school days, she probably does not remember me … i don’t know why that matters to me … or why it becomes an odd curiosity that yes, there are still dreams here, they just aren’t mine anymore …

i am becoming a stark-eyed cat, cornered animal, where the lights are steaming heat bulbs of flowering anger and i cannot handle this strain on my soul … it is as if a confident fingertip has access and i am feeling the pressure upon my organs, a waiting autopsy of disconnected moments … everything here is slightly removed, we are taught to be objective and i am finding where “objectivity” is just another word for face without emotion, heart without passion, mind without rhetoric … how can one be so removed from their art and where it comes from? i try to find a solace in these facts and histories, i am not a passive person … i am not passive-aggressive either, nor do i enjoy forced self-expression … yet i seem to be fighting those same sort of tendencies … a teacher i thought of as one of my favorites last semester recently told me one cannot be belligerent when defending one’s own artwork, implying i had exhibited such potential qualities … is questioning the questioner an act of insolent defiance? i am told by my fellow classmates that i am the only one that will stick up for my artowrk during our art critique .. this is not sitting well in my stomach … this directed pushing is not welcome … i used to know who i was before all of this … doubt is again folding its arms around my neck … i don’t look out the window as much as i used to … that is my true inspiration though … the cycling of self, reacting with the environment, reading of philosophy and poetry … two things i have not been able to indulge in these sleepless, worried nights … shaking hands … i am getting migraines from all this, and i despise medicinal comfort .. i must do a lot of rethinking i believe …

so my father shattered and dismembered at least 4 of my best art peices that i made for my concentration last year, one of which recieved first place in a show last year as well … hmmm … and all we speak of are finance and safety issues … that i want to move to the east … that he wants to be free … i suppose it is in his nature to see how much he can sting me with his scorpion talons before i drown, wading across this pool with him …. why must fruedian psychology always be an apllicable reference to my familial relations … i’d rather speak of drunken indifference ….

“I don’t pay my taxes. I won’t pay for weapons, for prisons.”
–Kathy Kelly

I don’t pay my taxes.
I don’t want to fund the jobs of the government and bureaucracy that daily bring us one step closer to George Orwell’s nightmare vision.
I don’t support a Congress who voted themselves pay increases that have doubled their salaries in ten years, while the teachers of America get cut and the poor get poorer everyday.—while my best friend can’t even feed her child or the baby that is growing inside of her.
I don’t want to fund a welfare system based on easy-way-outs and on the principle of monetary silence. I want to see these people, I want to give them help where it counts, not send my dollars and forget about it.
I don’t support the democratic veil of America; I didn’t vote for Bush and neither did many of the people I know. In truth, I, as an American citizen, am still not trusted to pass a responsible direct vote. The electoral college does that for me.
I don’t support the veil of democratic principle that shields a capitalist oligarchy, and I will not give them the food on which they thrive: my hard-earned currency which is in a way equal to my life in the logic of Karl Marx.
I refuse to fund the fruitless Drug War and the imprisonment of my fellow pothead over a rapist/murderer.
And I will never, ever condone the use of technology and the construction of machinery for the sole purpose of destroying human, animal, and ecological life, nor do I condone sanctions which place these aspects of life on a slower path to this same end.
In short, I don’t pay taxes.

And I have nothing to give but drawings and sheets of text when the IRS comes knocking on my door.
Material poverty in itself is a freedom. They cannot take the wealth I have because it is not in material abundance.
“Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose.”

some one will break this silence sooner or later