Gas Station Dick Pills And Other American Dreams

For

It’s easy to sell dreams to some people who have lived in desperation. And the dream-sellers themselves are often the ones who create those desperate conditions.

We learn to find whatever joy we can, where we can. In a merciless landscape, sometimes we make do with existence itself, or otherwise find solace in the midst of excruciating loneliness, and pain.

This is my first larger collection of poetry, 76 pieces if I counted correctly. My earlier book Call Me Earthling, helped me clear out the psychic space I needed in order to do this.

Gas Station Dick Pills And Other American Dreams is inspired by nearly two decades of wandering, and homelessness among the impending, and now ongoing, American apocalypse. Some works are also inspired by my earlier travels in the Middle East, and Europe.

I exist because my grandparents got the fuck out. Each side of my family came from different places, different countries, but the results were the same. Those who stayed behind were murdered. The family that I knew was very small.

We should endeavor not to become the evil that we have survived.

In America the pressure to fit in was (and is) overwhelming. I think of the carrot and the stick. Difference was brutally punished. On the other hand, comfort was not truly attainable for immigrants or their children.

Being a trans kid who was self-aware from a very young age was extremely painful and confusing. Again, no place of comfort in the world. The words and ideas used today did not exist back around 1960. I just went to school, lined up with the girls, and tried to tell people who I was. I learned extremely quickly not to do that.

I could say the same about disability, and signs of homelessness. The more hidden, the more acceptable I become, but always at the expense of getting my own needs met.

When the world tries to chew you up, and spits you out, but you are as stubborn, and tenacious as all hell, what do you become?