Extinction Gardening, Vol. 1

Author: Manuel Ferrazzo

i overdosed on 21st century

[Content Warning: Substance use, brutality, vulgarity, and sexual violence]

i snorted a skyscraper today.
i let its inhabitants flow in my civilised-white-ash nostrils and
i felt the rush of productivity,
the euphoria of paid slavery,
the lights of steel cogs and fire.

i remembered the first minutes of this millennium,
when the savages attacked other savages,
(which is which?)
and all their lands of god responded by violence.

astral bodies became our new gods,
pushing their product to gather new herds
all around the world.
i remember when they wanted to
crucify christ on live tv,
thinking people would pay to see it.
they would. of course they fucking would.

we raped our planet
and blamed her
because she just couldn’t shut her legs.
i mean, mother nature is a whore.
hunger? what for, hunger doesn’t exist.

i remembered when we handed our power
to hatred, or cowardice,
self-righteousness on all ends,
venomous rats fighting over details,
blindly fighting the other
because they’re other,
because they’re stupid,
because they’re savages,
because they’re black, white, believers, apostates,
etc.

the announcers feeding on fear on one end,
and on the other,
the tin-foiled hats started to talk.
governments are nothing. they mean nothing, in our western world,
they have no power without corporations.
government and corporation:
the king and queen
of our game of chess.

i remembered how we liked to push the weak around,
just for the fuck of it.
is idiocy malignancy? can they live without one another?
who knows? maybe the little birds
singing and screaming
through the cage of light
can explain it to us.
when does stupidity become consciousness
“i’ve never been more awake”
said the dreamer to imaginary nightmares.
truth is relative, baby.
“i’m an ally, he said. just let me fuck you.”

i remembered the neons, on the district,
where red meat finds the mouths of carnivorous rats.
they wear suits and talk about family
and cry for forgiveness when they’re not careful enough.
their victims are called Aileen,
they’re the fairer sex so you think they can’t kill you.
but they don’t eat and they don’t sleep
and they let trauma consume them.

americans love rorschach.
the black and the white are all that they see,
and all blackness is evil, and all whiteness is pure.
they hate when their propaganda use rainbows
to feast on the oppressed,
because they’d rather be brainwashed all alone
rather than sharing their lobotomy.
kill the gays, they cried to god.
kill the muslims,
kill the pigs,
kill them all.

we build the west on the back of the poor,
and otherness is feared as much as familiarity.
look at our shiny towers!
look at our watches, our art, our language!
so perfect.
let us debate all these things in the most secluded place in the world,
with complicated words and caviar
and useless books nobody gives a fuck about,
or let the artists who don’t know
shit about what they’re talking about (like me)
tell you you’re evil and you deserve to die.

like library rats,
they yell about ethics and literature,
fascinated by a useless field
that grows something mostly tasteless,
except when the rain falls on the right leaf,
wherever this leaf came from.
they think themselves as the new thinkers of our world
when their destiny is either to rise amongst the elite
and get infected by their greed,
or die forgotten amongst the useless poor.

you all deserve to die in these gutters.
because misanthropy is cool,
look at me,
i’m not like other boys.
i breathe genocide
and smell of supremacy,
but i don’t even realise it.
nietzsche has never been more popular
amongst self-made men,
even though we all know that,
like the rest of us,
they can’t understand jack shit
of what that nietzsche has written.

who knows who we are.
i mean,
identity…
right?
we become another person
every
minute.
so,
[insert reference to the ship of Theseus]

And yet,
while the noise blinds us,
we’re still here.
In the ruins of skyscrapers,
We remain.

Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo

haiku for a nuclear winter

the white ash cracking
all the dead skeleton trees
sing doom with the wind

Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo

The Eye That Escapes (Consume Me)

[Content Warning: Profanity]

This eye won’t see you,
when you look at it.
It will look the other way,
to the sky, to its God,
and towards indifference.

The white blinds you,
and the fine dark lines around them
drive you off the edge of the world.
The irises, kaleidoscopical,
Sing in mine.

The red appeals to taste,
reminds me of innocence lost
and whoring-Mary, mother of Christ.
You would devour the apple,
if there was no God.

The soft silk hides,
leather binds,
you and my eyes.
Flowers pierced with swords,
and toys with holy crosses.

Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo

this world is gone, yet there’s still beauty

This world is gone.

But in its ruins, we find our souls.
When all breaks, we become one again.

Yet with all souls comes the impending doom,
the element of fear that keeps us awake
every single night.

Fear of losing everything,
when we know we have already lost it.
Fear of smiling,
when there’s nothing to smile about anymore.

This fear guides us back to the light,
back to the hope and the happiness we once had,
it nurses us back to health,
keeps us safe from despair,
from the perspective of our nothingness.

Because, even in a broken world,
there is beauty.
Death is just the Hierophant of Life.
And even if Life won’t have us,
it will endure,
it will prevail, without us.

Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo

Yggdrasil

yearning for the roots,
growing out of the heads of children,
grains of milk-sand
drag the leaves across the night sky.
reaching for the beyond,
abandoning the oneness of all gods,
searching through star-filled nightmares,
i
lead the lost to find the crescent moon they dream of.

Image: © Manuel Ferrazzo