Either Way

I have nothing to say to anybody 
They say a lot of nothing to me 
in different words or no words at all 
In calls that aren’t placed or things not ventured 

I don’t care if this poem is good or bad 
If it’s worth finishing or if it’s finished 
If anyone ever reads it or remembers how to read 
If anyone holds up their end of a conversation 
in some utopia that won’t be allowed to last 
somewhere jackboots haven’t deployed to yet

Fine with me if everything gets worse 
Why should I care if you’re not yourself 
Or if our worst is who we’ve all always been 
What we even are if we’re even anything 
If anything even is or it was all made out of nothing 
Whether it was made by someone or no one 
Or if I help everyone make us all nothing 
so it aligns with their belief systems 
which vary wildly except for a common commitment to only remember how 
to weaponize them 

You can use my words as your weapon 
Any kind, however fatal, to however many whoevers
I just don’t give a shit 
You can forget I ever wrote anything 
That I spoke up to get interrupted 
That everyone just interrupts and
keeps saying the same nonsense nothings 
that only say anything about themselves 
and their allergies to manners or logic 
or rebuilding any home for reciprocity 
You can burn my books or buy them 
just to use them as exhibit A 
in some court case in a null and void court room
or use them to fuel any arson anywhere 
I don’t care cos I’m the living dead just 
as much as anybody 
As everybody who answered or didn’t today 
who said the same things either way 

I don’t care if I have any breakfast 
or starve before the end of the work week 
I agree it’s not clear I’ve ever worked hard enough 
for breakfast ever 
Why should dinner be allowed for the poor 
Doesn’t matter to me not my responsibility 
I take no responsibility and feel nothing 
as everything’s taken from me 
I’ll go to the protest and say nothing 
Hold up no sign and not even tell anyone 
No one is anything and nothing’s real anywhere 

There is no place wherever you go 
Wherever you turn there’s no orbit turning 
No sun or ego to center anything on 
that isn’t anything and has no definition 
Definition isn’t a word and word isn’t either 
Outrage isn’t in anyone who isn’t anywhere 
It’s not hallucinated none of this is simulated 
There’s no mind to fictionalize total absence 
No one to program holosuites 
Nothing to strap anyone who isn’t into 
Straps aren’t
Can’t tie everything’s antithesis to emptiness 

You can keep trying or give up 
Either way no one is really doing either anywhere 
I don’t care anymore no force comes from anything 
Illusion is cast by nothing for no reason 
No one has ever gotten justice 
There is no vast damning sadism 
still wounding creation cosmically 
Nothing is cosmic or colloquial 
Or political or personal 
or true or false enough to be 
as false as whatever you believe in 

Keep projecting your irrelevant lightshow 
at the blank screen of my concern if it fools you 
into thinking thinking is something
anyone has ever done anywhere 
when nothing anywhere was ever made