Mental Entrepreneurship and the End of History

Lídia Vives (photography owner)

Winter is at our doorsteps. Trees turning a raunchy gold setting all their leaves afloat. Free salads showering through the air. This is no golden shower, for all those trying to picture something nice? No. But ease your mind and you can see an alternative truth to that which is presented.

Our brain is no muscle, but like a muscle feels. Its churning up there day and night, neurons like soviet era assembly lines working across the clock for a greater cause. It comes in handy to have a brain. Even more in handy these days when its actually working. But sometimes using that brain or being mindful means letting go, sizing down, laying off some people in that cerebral factory of yours.

We are all born as mental entrepreneurs, tasked to bring order to our faculties upstairs. We choose drugs, alcohol, sex, aggression to cut down on unwanted staff. We choose art, love, hope and compassion to bring our ranks in order and keep morale high. And all the world is churning in this unreal space. An industrial revolution of desires. An invisible war of nervous impulses. From control economies to economies of control, what difference does it make. Flyers, banners, slogans, ads, rhetorical conversations interacting across a space of minds.

And all we need to realize is that everything is packaged in our skulls. Quite the image if you could see it. This economy of the physical world, this marketplace of ideas, its happenings and fate are attached to our mental sweatshops. Cooperatives, lobbies, unions of contemplating states formed between our friends, in our community and across the world.

Point is, life is a state of mind and those minds are ours to oversee. Despite the dawn of liberal age, relics of a darker past stand still and unchanged. With empty humanism and fake notions of self determination we are forced to live. The machinery of our desires unrefined and geared towards our own self destruction. To make things right, calm your thoughts and treat your workers well. All it takes is a bit of faith, persistence and imagination to build the ideal home. And Mr. Francis, history by no means at all has ended!

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http://bohemiaspeaks.com/about/

The Anatomy of War

Does it end here?
Or begin
Bubble gum
Without a flavor
In my mouth
But I still chew
As I clean my gun
Same flavor on repeat

Planes revving
Rockets loading
Ships aligned
Seagulls waiting for their cue
Distant sirens
Executions in the dozen
Dusty roads empty
Throbbing cities silenced

This ancient place
Once so green and lively
Disconnected from its course
In history
Foreign thoughts
Values foreign to our ways
Occupation, bloodshed, wars
Dictators, mullahs, crazy clerics
Oil, gas, Jerusalem
Crimes of conviction and interest
Intertwined

Let us rest
Let us be
Let us live
There must be something
Fundamental, wrong
With this world
That so much hate and chaos
Can materialize
In this space and time
As if the universe
Churns its problems
And spits them in our mouths

So much commotion in a simple grain of sand
Blown across the world
Prompters, cameras, media lights
Particles colliding, merging, separating
In cyberspace
Sub-atomic wars every day
In cable lines and simple air
But all we see are dunes of sand
And huffed up speeches
So much commotion everywhere

In this world
Of material form
How can we be so beautiful?
When we’re condemned
To this commotion
Invisible disorder
Inside the fabric of our universe
And so we kill and rape and fuck
Bound by creative chaos
Until we die
Until we’ve been replaced
In sandy dunes
A few oases
Can never make a home

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Poem 105

The Hooligan: An Ode to our Fuckin’ State

to be read in an Irish accent (preferably when intoxicated)

Fuck this twat
Opinionated asswipe
Stuffed with plastic whistles
That referee needs some stylish lovin’
A backrub by my uncle Sam
Or brawl with aunty Guinevere
It’s anarchy that we divide
Amongst our organized conjunction here
Fearless champions
Of every cause
And with our footsteps
Stadiums rumble
Bobbies tiptoe shy and clean
More like tiny boobies
On a teen
They cannot feed the crowds
Fuck the rules
We play to win, no hesitation
And in our bigotry
We survive
Don’t blame us, blame the world
For being such a place
That leaves no room
For compromise
In violence
Our children thrive
Against the world of rubber balls
Not the ones beneath our hinds
But those out there
On fields so green
Of that beloved land
That we’ve no choice
But to call home
Serve and protect
Until we’re seen

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Character: 89/100
Bobbies is slang for police, boobies is slang for.. well, you know what

The Fisherman: The Geopolitics of Love

And empires blown to dust
Peoples slaughtered
Worlds a changing
But here in this sweet bay
A million years of love
I cast a net
The sea reciprocates
It casts a net into my life
And catches all the maladies
I smell the salty breeze
It takes my boat across the strait
No room for borders here
No room for malice
Except of course
For my poor bait
The wrinkles in my face
Can tell a million tales
A million years of constancy
Enduring time, the whims of man
Enduring history
And even meaning falls
Purpose like a crumbling loaf of bread
But in this sea
Eternal springs
No crumbs are gone to waste
I live and die
The remnants of my life
Ashes, scattered
Across the tides
For eternity

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Character: 83/100 (We’re getting closer! Awaiting the second phase of Bohemiaspeaks!)

The Child Worker: The Urine Factory

Let’s play
I am mature
At far too young an age
Lingering in my misconceptions
In wombs of failing times
And eras of disgust
I am conceived
I learn to work
I play with these machines
Monsters roaring at my face
I smile back, but they still roar

I swing myself across the metal plates
And when it hurts
I think of love
The image of my family
In these sad lands
We have to toil
We have to work for liberty
Only to hail another dawn
Of self-inflicted bigotry

Plastic handcuffs
These shackles here
Across my arms
This factory
It represents the day and age
In which a child far away
Is set to learn life’s misery
Too early on
A day where people’s needs are far beyond
The prospects of humanity

And so my fate is cast to doubt
The fate of our entirety
Lies in the cleavage of this slum
Breastfeeding us with certainty
That far beyond these metal prongs
We glorify our own country
What glory can there be in pain?
An economic victory?
And as we squeeze ourselves to grow
Without confined morality
The whole world chants our glorious name
They say we’re making history

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Character: 79/100 (We’re getting closer!)

The Political Activist: Fading Shades of Glory

I fall apart
Faced with reality
Pieces of my past
Cutting through my heart
A million daggers dangling
Like pendulums from strings
I see them sway
A network of  distress
From all across the globe

Jaded from this world
I relinquish all my passions
And move beyond my doubts
Into a barren land
Where souls bedazzled
By their own remorse
Roam in vain between
So many empty causes

In this void of recollection
Time no longer rules
Dimensions skew
Towards dumbfounding heights
Atop a distant hill
That I call home
The universe converges at my doorstep
Clarity like air after the rain
Pervades my inner sadness
And bequeaths
A being so deranged, misunderstood
Misplaced and judged in fault

Along this path I lead my life
In search of hope
In search of truth
In search of love and meaning
Between the fading shades of my flag’s glory
And upon the very land that I called home

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Character: 75/100

The Soldier: Pimping Wars and Media Whores

Splinters of ash
Washed upon my shores
I play with castles
My fingers bleed
Up until it rains
A little child, he smiles
Just for a while
The sound of rockets
A nation bleeding from its ears
The whole world’s perched
Atop this distant hill
Six billion eyes all on one hill
Six billion tongues, six billion minds
And yet we’re so alone

We rush to make a change
To kill, to steal a life from someone else
The bullets seep into our flesh
A million rounds, a million aching wounds
They hurt so much
They leave a mark forevermore
We make the headlines
A bunch of media whores
Fucked over then forgotten by the war

Tomorrow morning the sun will never rise
Our world will seep into a deep surrender
The printing press will fabricate some lies,
We’ve won the war they say,
And yet this hill has lost so many lives
A million bodies stacked from head to toe
A living sculpture of our own demise

They sent us here,
They cheered us as we fought
And now they’ve turned their eyes away
Some look upon a burka in disgust
But they themselves are veiled
Behind a thicker curtain
A sheath of fiber optics, media bites
A stage, a prompter, cameras and lights
Objectifying wars with gory lust
And counterfeiting peace to suit their needs
They are no different
Sending us to fight
Against the very horrors they incite!

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Character: 51/100

The Protester: Deflowering the Arab Spring

An apple bitten to the core
A slaughtered rabbit on a chain
The dismal prospects of a whore
The screeching chalk drives me insane

Where should I go when I have reached
So far down pathways of remorse
How can I feel after I’m skinned
My conscience rotting in a cell

In prisons deep you hear the cries
We beg for death to end the game
No media cam is watching now
Let’s break our vows and die in shame

How can I write and make some sense
When all these words are far too weak
To shed some light on all my  fear
A tyrant challenged is a freak

With blindfolds on my eyes for months
I do not know if I can see
The nation’s blinded by its lust
For some expensive sodomy

We perish in the thousandfold
For freedom, honor, and for beauty
Then to our shock, lo and behold
We’re captive to our dignity

A despot leaves, the people cheer
The blindfolds off, it becomes clear
That we will always be confined
Collective memory rules mankind

Our freedom once a virgin child
An Arab Spring so young at heart
But now the blood runs down her feet
A nation raped on its own part

Hash-tags can never save us now
So let’s just tweet our own defeat

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Character: 46/100

The Detainee: Postcards from Guantanamo Bay

Hell has built its citadel
And put me on display
The devil taunts my body parts
The inferno is ablaze
And as the fire burns inside
My flesh is dripping off my bones
Conventions fail to save me here
Even human kindness does not convene

But pain can guide you towards relief
With broken bones and aching joints
I’m baptized into new beliefs
I cross the gate and understand
That my religion is that of grief
And so is his
The soldier at the gate
In pain there is camaraderie

Back home where all my countrymen
Are hurting soldiers just like here
I’m sure the tortured understand
That pain and anguish bind us all

And for some moments
I wish that I could build a land
Where both the enemies share their prison cells
A neutral third can take the job
An outsourced torture
For all of us to have

We’d both be hanged on wires thin
We’d both be asked to sit on bottles tall
We’d both be whipped and tossed aside
We’d both be peed on
Together
Until are dignity drowns

And yes you ask me, this makes more sense?
At least by seeing whom I hate
In my same pain
And him by seeing me
We’d feel less pain
And in some way
We’d set each other free

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Character: 41/100

Requiem for a Nation – Inside the mind of the Suicide Bomber

I’m heading towards my target point
A button in my palm
And when I choose to detonate
The world will hear my bomb
I’ve lost my parents to a boom
My children to a bang
My one and only love was killed
But yet I keep my calm

This land right here below my feet
Has drank my blood and sweat
The thrill of fighting floats
Like fog across its fields
A misty drug that seeps into the minds
To ease the toil of tyranny

And so we’ve fought for such a time
And so much has been lost
To think that gaining dignity
Is pieced inside a piece of land
To think that freedom
Is somehow hidden in the dirt
What of the dignity of those who died
Alone and helpless and in a fearful state
What of the freedom of us to love
Our enemies that do not to choose to fight
And in a cyber age where man can move
Why is this land still paramount?

As I approach
My finger gives the final click
The world into a million pieces rips
The colors mix, a glimpse of heaven gives a flash

I see so many flying smiles
A school bus in the air
The lover waiting at the corner
Is no longer there

And in my endless bag of fury
I spread my vengeance in a seed
My bomb delivers more than just a bang
I plant my grief into their lives
Tomorrow they will strike again
Tomorrow another million pieces will emerge
There are so many pieces that can tear

And as I melt inside this raging fire
My soul is welded with all the shattered hearts
I understand
We fight and lose each other
But if we submit
Oppression’s toll is too hard to bear
Maybe we should all just gather
In one big blast
Together
Once and for all
Ripping the final pieces of this puzzle
A masterpiece of free-will
And forever hold your peace