life is short, make every minute count.
running late, running behind, running out of time.
rise and grind, early bird, not a moment wasted.
memento mori—remember that you will die.

don't waste my time time is money money is power
levels of extraction, refinement
the industrialization of living
mine an hour and refine it into labour sold
for a number of dollars that buy you the power to... what?

to feel free?
in the time you have left?
in the time you haven't sold?

no pain, no gain
as if a redwood needed trauma to tower.

what else dies on the alter of time?
i'll sleep when I'm dead
as if the dead wouldn't give everything to sleep, to dream, to rest.
to lay down in one form and wake up renewed:
sleep is not death, it is metamorphosis, transformation

sleep is the seed in winter soil
the rising bread
the baby in the belly

remember that you will die
did you remember that you will live?

have you never lain with your lover
and felt a minute stretch into forever?
what would it feel like to
make love to
every
moment?

i am going to live forever
i will make love to every moment
i will ask can I do this forever?
i will no longer strip-mine my time
i will no longer colonize my time

i will no longer tear up the
richly watered ferns of my hours
to steal bauxite from my red earth:
it is not sustainable.

if time were sand
then you would dread the last grain
but time is water
and you cannot drain the ocean

you are going to live forever
you are going to live forever
you are going to live forever
so live

i watched the squirrel dart out
trying to reach the playground
the only piece of grass and tree
we had left for it in the city
only to be struck
killed by an indifferent machine

i sat stunned, for hardly a second
before the car behind me
beeped impatiently
(places to be)

what is this story
we choose to live in
where a senseless death
is so commonplace
as to be an inconvenience

the future is not
a thousand years away
nor ten thousand

the future
is two inches to the left

i need you to explain
the difference between
making a living
and making a killing

minority rule
still the tool of oppressors
this shit needs to go
the court and the senators
all of these predators
this shit needs to go
robes hiding legalized prostitution
wipe up the cum with the constitution
fascist imperial institution
this shit needs to go

cant get this labor
for free, and you mad
this shit needs to go
done stuffed the whole 'conomy
into yo bag
this shit needs to go
force women to bear they fruit no choice
survivings a crime they locked in the joint
unlimited labor for you to exploit
this shit needs to go

still begging for power
that youll never use
this shit needs to go
fundraise for decades
and do nothing new
this shit needs to go
pander to who aint white straight and male
begging for votes like we paying your bail
if you aint gon do nothin stay out my mail
this shit needs to go

do something do something
do something now
this shit needs to go
stop acting so pussy
and do something now
this shit needs to go
get up kill the filly and take to the streets ban guns pack the courts and arrest djt
dont tell me to vote nigga you in the seat
and this shit needs to go

what will you do
when you finally have
everything
you were told
you should want?

my joy ripped the air from my lungs
in shuddering gasps and leaping laughs
whipping through me like wind in the trees
and only then
i could breathe

my sadness rained down on me
soaking me through to the bone
washing away everything i thought i was
and only then
i was dry

my anger burned me to ash
immolated my sensibility
torching my sense to cinder
and only then
i was reborn

my love held me firm
shook the ground under my feet
tore open every fault line
and only then
could i grow

red, and blue
yellow, and green
tell me again
how the waters rose

the screen tells a story
a mottled spectrum
bright yellows and greens
as the stormfront rolls in
bright yellows and greens
as the stocks rise

bright reds and blues
fighting in texas
the mottled gray of
an ultrasonic battleground
transparent tears falling
like so much bad weather

did you know, then?
the bright yellows and greens
of the bp logo
flowering with thoughts and prayers
they refuse to answer themselves

did you know, then?
the reds and blues
of cable news tribalism
legitimizing thoughts and prayers
as a method of governance

of course we knew
in the same way
a tapeworm
knows the good times
can't last forever

red, and blue
yellow, and green
tell me again
how the waters rose