Baudrillard in the Bathroom

Sitting on the toilet seat in my bathroom smoking weed and cigarettes while reading Baudrillard, as my teenager sits on my bed playing Minecraft on my realm with their friend who is pretending to be a famous British streamer.

 

And writing. Writing this nonsense about nonsense for no reason, while thinking of the hyperreal, as it spreads across all of what once was real, consuming and destroying and replacing everything in its wake. I don’t even know if I care anymore, because what is the point if we are all just being dragged and drugged by inertia and dopamine away from the real, the tangible, and into the hyperreal?

 

This is my horror. This is why the only safety I can imagine is a log cabin deep in the woods, on hundreds of acres, with a good source of fresh water and fish; a river or a large and clean lake. Nowhere else is safe, and even there, buried in the depths of the woods, no doubt I would soon begin to see drones advertising VR, or the Metaverse, or AI, or Elon’s Next Big Savior Tech.

 

Soon after, I’m quite certain, the government, in their great “concern for my welfare,” would forcefully move me to some infested rat hole in an overcrowded digitally run city, and have me prescribed daily doses of VR (under threat of confinement in a psych ward) to cure my delusion that reality has inherent value, simply for being real. Simply for the truth of it. We are all well and truly fucked, my friends, and I’ll toke and smoke to that.

2/11/2022

Infested City

The city streets

Are a tangle

of pheromones.

 

Reptiles

Huddled in the

greasy sand

Sleep

Amid tired

Butterflies

Flitting lazily

Towards

Annihilation.

 

Strange figures

Walk slowly through

The alleyways.

Devotees of rot

Draped in yards of

Fine woven

Fabric,

Dyed the colors

Of mold

And the city

At night,

Make a solemn

Procession

To nowhere.

 

Their robes swirl

Violently

Behind them.

The fabric dances

In the fetid

Breeze

That gusts

Perpetually

Through the

Concrete valleys,

Like storm clouds

Raging

Too close to the

Ground.

 

Infants wail as they pass,

And shadows

Cower.

They scatter their

Mildewed seed

Amid the waste

As they chant

In empty

Melodies,

With words long

Forgotten,

A spell to wake

The end.

 

They invoke,

As they scatter,

Something hollow.

Another,

They say,

Who will arise

From their garbled

Invocations;

One nourished by

Apathy,

Who will take root

And grow

In the barren soil

Built up

In the cracks

Of a crumbling

Infrastructure.

 

The equator

Of the dark of the moon

Is reflected here.

 

Here,

Hidden from the

Lifeless shops,

Where monks chant

And worms

Slither,

The mirror

Is held high–

Showing

The mosquitoes

Their faces,

While they suck

On the life

Of their

Artificial

Host.

 

9/19/25

 

 

While the World Erupts

Clover fields

and sun-drenched skies,

wispy clouds,

they are but lies.

 

Everyone

is shrill, is cold–

nothing’s real,

they’ve lost their souls.

 

Smiling kids

with viper’s fangs

ring their bells–

for death, they clang.

 

Lovers in

their secret rooms

turn to dust

inside their tombs.

 

Nations rise

while others fall

but this time

death comes for all.

 

Shadows play

before my eyes,

whispering

what next will die.

 

Go along

and play your games

while the world

erupts in flames.

 

7-7-19

The Foundations

It’s all

crumbling.

We ignored the cracks,

now rebar whines

somewhere deep inside,

and the foundations begin

to groan.

 

A cloud crosses

before the moon,

and I wonder how close

Hati is to him now.

Someday he’ll be caught.

The wolf will

devour

the moon,

in the end.

 

Even the music

has faded.

Each note blurs into

the next,

as they all rush past,

without notice.

 

Everything reeks of mildew

and rot.

Neglect.

I hear crows

in the distance,

and the foundations

groan louder.

 

It’s time to wake up,

dear ones,

or we’re lost.

 

5-12-19

Cultural Graveyard

The roiling masses

scoop ashes of yesterday

into purses of gold,

as they crawl through fog

unaware of its caustic fumes.

 

The scent of lavender

and a glint of emerald light

sneak out from cracked-stone monuments

to dead and misplaced dreams.

 

In the distance

A low wail begins.

 

3-21-19

 

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