Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

I wrote this after reading about the Asco art collective, in contemplation with the feelings of alienation the members felt and how they used this to lean into avant garde and radical art. They discuss influences of the Chicano movement, but also how their fashion and art estranged them from the Chicano community in East Los Angles, leading to the claiming of “Asco.” This theme brought to mind an image where the sociopolitical and/or sociocultural landscape was something that ate people and tried to make them all the same. (Trigger Warning: graphic descriptions of eating).

Consumer

It chews you up and spits you out,

rips the good parts, the nutritious ones, off the bone,

masticates and sallows them to sustain itself.

It gorges on everything of sustenance, leaving behind the dregs.

The oddities, the originality, the things and parts that differentiate,

but it mangles them, tosses to the side the greasy fat.

Hallows out the bones, aspirates the marrow, and

the gnaws on them.

It leaves you vacuous.

It leaves most vacuous.

Then, it shits it all out.

The shit always looks the same,

sounds the same, wears the same clothes,

and drinks the same beer, and it lets the shit succeed.

Its cogs run pedantically. Constantly seeking,

in ceaseless pursuit.

Some escape, but most don’t,

some never even run,

they let it consume them and shit them out,

and then they become the shit.

But I guess at least they succeed.

It is difficult to evade.

Some it outright stalks,

others it metamorphoses into written words

and uncomfortable walks on dark sidewalks to the door.

I started out running. Ran as fast as I could,

bare feet on the warm slick ground.

Maybe the track was already in its stomach.

I think I was running in the small intestine,

that is why it was so long. Never ending.

Finally, I hit the end, clawed my way back up

to the esophagus, or maybe I am actually headed down?

I don’t know, which way is up or down.

What thoughts are my own and what are just its thoughts,

reverberating off its stomach from all the years I sat in the acid.

The hot, sticky, acid that burned my skin until I could not even tell it was mine.

I want my thoughts to be my own again, but how is it even possible

when all I know is influence?

Either way, up or down, the only way is out.