[oats]

I feel bad because I always read your verses, but rarely do I drop feed. it's not because I don't enjoy your work, but more so because they are so open to dissection and exploration that my own tendency to delve intimidates me. weird, I know. in any case.

this was dope. To me this was a biopsy by way of a landscape sketch; not so much an inquiry or analysis so much as it was a description. I like that approach - it relieves you the burden of feigning authority, which is important to me when dealing with such grandiose subject matter. it's not easy to do, or do well at least, but this was a great example of walking that tightrope of observation over dictation. lead us to the water instead of waterboarding us.

first stanza is rife with images. I liked the early Solomon homage, he was always my favorite Biblical king. His story seems like a synecdoche for our overall human fate; we're too smart and too weak for our own good. it was an intriguing contrast with seppuku. to take death as more honorable than carrying on, in the same vein of Solomon's shame to repent from what he knew was wrong. our stubbornness is a hell of an enemy.

next great visual for me was the auctioning off of one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse to go buy fairy-tale, fleeting pleasures. reminded me of this essay. it's so easy to shove death in a corner while we collectively look at the shiny gleam of our mirrors. so far, this stanza strikes me as a surveyal of what's wrong with the world through loosely connected images. But then you hit us with:

Corruption: an infection eating away at the workings of a harlot's breast
does it constitute the prostitutional clause of why we're all a wreck?

scathing incision here. I took this as a rebuttal to my victimist rationale in things. "maybe if I was getting paid more I'd care more." "maybe if those idiots in washington could get their act together I wouldn't be procrastinating." etc etc. just making excuses because hey, it can't be me if it's systemic! Right?! how quick we are to capitulate our own agency to justify our flaws. this was a real profound thought to me, needless to say.

Bleeding may occur in the bodies of evidence
suffocation, strangulation, starvation? Probably negligence

definitely negligence. the seeds of our undoing are far too unsightly to bother with, even when they're in plain view. if I can pick a nit here is that the culprits tend to be the usual suspects of selfishness, thoughtlessness, capitalism and its chemtrails of manipulation(re: planet of the take line). blame valid, nonetheless. second stanza, in general, takes a bit more of a lighthearted lens for its moral photography. yay simple lifeforms! you guys have paid your dues long enough. while I loved the dead poets reference, I think this stanza was a bit of a dropoff from the first, if only for the range of its meanderings. a little too thin for my likings.


third stanza hits a stride conceptually with the fatalist nod that understanding our past is really insignificant because we're hurdling inexorably to such a predictable end. again, felt like the source being industrialization and sophistication was a bit of a cop-out (though "simian scars" was a dope line, I must admit).

"Pass the scalpel and the tendon brush, this specimen is venomous"
Official morgue dental records don't truly present results
since he had enlarged molars, and a ventilation latch
Up through his gums sat wisdom teeth, and generation gaps

really loved this quatrain, especially that final line. great unpacking of dental records as a metaphor for death. this re-threads the theme of romanticizing ancient spiritualism in regards to death compared to the cold, brutish honesty of our flawed scientific understanding. with the distance between our modern selves and our ancestors, wisdom is lost. in our case, wisdom is purposefully removed, as is the process of getting wisdom teeth taking out. Hutu bentleys was a sardonic line, really enjoyed it.

"How many times can ashes be re-cremated before they disappear?"

this was the mind melter right here. see usually, I read your verses thinking that you have a general outline of your idea, and as you write it leads you to the conclusion. the magic of the writing process, some say. In this case, I feel like you had this line before you started writing, and wanted to incorporate it somehow, but as you kept writing you realized this question is what you should build towards, not use as a building block to something else. It's powerful, thought provoking. nihilism seems to be a fitting conclusion; we're all just ashes of former life.

I dug this a lot. to beat the dead horse, I would have preferred to see a bit more of an internal conflict as the driving force behind these observations, make it more raw and personal, more real. capitalism/progress/technology etc are too obvious for your talent to wander over. there were flirty exchanges with more penetrative analysis, but they were brief. I'd like to see that angle from you.

ultimately, a vulgar verse can always be appreciated for its originality. you'd suck in an alias topical tourney, because nobody writes remotely similar to you. that's impressive for a niche genre that's defined by its literary constraints (you MUST rhyme!). keep doing you, it's always a pleasure.