Archive for December, 2017

Love

December 30, 2017

Love don’t do the dishes
Love won’t tie your shoes
Love didn’t cook your dinner
Love can’t change a fuse

Love will not protect us
Love cannot atone
Love don’t stop our leaders
From dropping all those drones

Love don’t bomb no babies
Love don’t start no wars
We do a trillion ugly things
Love ain’t keeping score

Love won’t fix the shower
Love can’t brush your hair
The only thing it’s good for
Is making people care

by Richard W. Bray

Machine

December 27, 2017

They wanna count you, classify you
Stamp a number on your head
Aggravate you, allocate you
Every day until you’re dead

They sanitize and organize you
Till you fit in the machine
Hypnotize you, terrorize you
Till you’re lonely scared and mean

Indoctrinate you, fill-with-hate you
And nourish you with lies
Calibrate you, automate you
And march you off to die

by Richard W. Bray

I had to find out for myself

December 22, 2017

She burned my possessions
She poisoned my mule
She shredded my flat screen
And threw it in the pool

I had to find out
for myself
I wouldn’t believe
nobody else

She’s runnin all around
With a bunch of new men
My boss and my brother
And five of my friends

I had to find out
for myself
it wrecked my mind
and ruined my health

She emptied my treasury
She cashed in my chips
She bought herself rubies
And had a nice trip

I had to find out
for myself
she really helped me
share the wealth

All of my buddies
Been saying for years
But I was too timid
To face down my fears

I had to find out
for myself
I wouldn’t believe
nobody else

by Richard W. Bray

The deepest darkest dirty you

December 16, 2017

The confession became one of the West’s most highly valued techniques for producing truth. We have since become a singularly confessing society. The confession has spread its effects far and wide. It plays a part in justice, medicine, education, family relationships, and love relations, in the most ordinary affairs of everyday life, and in the most solemn rites; one confesses one’s crimes, one’s sins, one’s thoughts and desires, one’s illnesses and troubles; one goes about telling, with greatest precision, whatever is most difficult to tell. One confesses in public and private, to one’s parents, one’s educators, one’s doctor, to those one loves; one admits to oneself, in pleasure and in pain, things that would be impossible to tell anyone else, the things people write books about. One confesses — or is forced to confess.
Michel Foucault, The History of Sexuality, Volume One

We have the right to know what’s true
The deepest darkest dirty you
And all those nasty things you do

Every word you ever said
Every thought that’s in your head
And everything you do in bed

We’re everywhere — you won’t get far
You have to tell us who you are
The ugly, wicked, and bizarre

We goad, we taunt, we tease, we hound
We build you up — we tear you down
We have the right to watch you drown

We pillage hearts and ransack souls
We seek salvation in your skull
And pray your blood will make us whole

by Richard W. Bray

Metacognition

December 9, 2017

Cut off on the highway
I ruminate for days
Some guy I’ll never see again
Has got to change his ways

Just met Dave’s new girlfriend
She’s intelligent and hot
Dave is such an asshole
I deserve the things he’s got

I talked to my fixations
I looked inside my head
My fixations we’re awakened
This is what they said:

I’m petty and I’m jealous
I’m greedy and I’m mean
My heart is filled with vengeance
I’m a normal human being

by Richard W. Bray

big sky

December 2, 2017

Big sky
Red truck
Trusty old hound

Big sky
Long stretch
Covering some ground

Big sky
Freedom
Miles of blooming dirt

Big sky
Heartache
The woman that I hurt

Big sky
Long days
What I gotta do

Big sky
Highways
Rolling back to you

by Richard W. Bray