Real is rare
rarely there
in the polluted saluted
sleep-tight sludge-fucker world
smile-fuckery handshakers
marionettes needled to their knuckles
prefabricated friction
created to fake out frauds
lost in the empty lie-down crowd
where is God?
stuck in the elevator of his own creation
take the ventilator out
breathe your own fire
into the chaos
How do you feel about cold weather?
Shoot me before I discuss the forecast
They ask about the weather
like it’s a holy event.
like rain personally offended them.
like the clouds filed paperwork.
“Cold enough for ya?”
No.
Shoot me.
If I ever become a man
who sincerely discusses wind chill
at a dinner party,
I authorize immediate execution.
Nearest firearm.
Center mass.
No hesitation.
Because weather talk
is the last known stage
before the soul calcifies.
You can watch it happen in real time.
A guy buys orthopedic shoes.
Starts saying “we needed this rain.”
Uses the phrase “bundle up.”
Suddenly he’s standing in a grocery store
comparing forecasts
like a frightened farmer
protecting invisible crops.
Meanwhile the planet spins
through infinite black violence,
people lose children,
go bankrupt,
cheat, relapse, pray,
fall apart in parked cars at 2AM—
and Gerald from accounting
wants to tell me
it might snow Thursday.
Beautiful.
That’s the trick, isn’t it?
Human beings inventing tiny safe noises
to keep from screaming into the void.
So yes—
I nod politely.
I participate.
I mention precipitation percentages
like a good little citizen.
But between us?
I hate cold weather.
Not philosophically.
Not poetically.
I mean physically hate it.
I hate the gray slush,
the dead trees,
the windshield scraping,
the way winter turns every parking lot
into a Soviet painting.
Cold weather feels like punishment
for surviving November.
Still—
people smile through blue lips
and call it “refreshing.”
That’s humanity for you.
Freezing to death politely
while discussing the forecast.
What’s the oldest things you’re wearing today?
What’s the oldest thing I’m wearing today?
Not the boots.
Not the jacket.
Not the watch pretending time means anything.
It’s the uneasy stomach.
The golf ball lodged in the throat.
The cracked heart stitched together with bad sleep, caffeine and whatever people call “moving on.”
Those are old.
Ancient, really.
Hand-tailored over years by loss, disappointment, memory, guilt, love and the quiet observations you never talk about out loud because everyone else is busy performing wellness like it’s an Olympic sport.
I wear old conversations that never ended properly.
Old funerals.
Old versions of myself I buried but still hear scratching around under the floorboards at 2 a.m.
None of it was designed by me.
It was made for me.
By every slammed door.
Every hospital hallway.
Every “I’m fine” that wasn’t.
Every moment you realized the world keeps spinning with horrifying confidence no matter what it takes from you.
That’s the oldest thing I’m wearing today.
And somehow, against all logic, it still fits.
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
I’d like to be a sanitation worker for one day.
Not because I romanticize hard labor.
Not because I’m looking for some blue-collar cosplay to post online with a thoughtful black-and-white filter and a caption about “real America.”
No.
I want the job where the city hands you its emptiness before sunrise.
Because I suspect I could learn more about humanity in one shift hanging off the back of a garbage truck than most therapists learn in a lifetime of softly lit offices and polite nodding.
The leftovers.
The excess.
The secrets people bag up and leave on the curb hoping nobody notices.
It’s one of the few jobs where you physically witness consumption, routine, decay, wealth, loneliness—all street by street. One block smells like expensive candles and Amazon boxes. The next smells like beer cans, cigarettes, and the slow collapse of a marriage. Somewhere in between is a kid’s broken bicycle, still half wrapped in birthday paper.
Civilization revealed through what it throws away.
No performance.
No meetings.
No decks.
No branding language.
No buzzwords and bullshit disguised as productivity.
Just brutal usefulness.
The world falls apart in about seventy-two hours without sanitation workers. Three days. That’s all it takes before people start realizing how thin the membrane is between society and rats chewing through the walls. Yet most people treat sanitation workers like background noise right up until the moment they disappear.
I respect that kind of invisible importance.
And there’s something beautiful about the simplicity of it. You wake up. You do the job. By the end of the shift, the streets are cleaner than you found them. Immediate purpose. Visible results. No quarterly alignment meeting required.
Plus, I think I’d enjoy waving at people while riding on the back of the truck, holding on with one arm like the city’s least celebrated cowboy, dirty secrets piled up behind me while the sun slowly crawls over the rooftops.
There’s poetry in that.
Not the kind written in universities or spoken through podcasts sponsored by mattress companies. Real poetry. The kind that smells faintly like diesel fuel, wet cardboard, stale beer, and human denial.
The kind of poetry that reminds you every single person leaves something behind.
#dailyprompt-1930
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#StreetPhilosophy
#WorkingClass
#SanitationWorker
#HumanCondition
#ModernLife
#FilterFailure
#DepartmentOfPublicNoise
#WordPressWriten
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#JamieMcCarthy #LettersFromTheStatic #NoBuzzwords
#invisablepeople
What topics do you like to discuss?
The Ones That Get You in Trouble
I like to discuss the three things polite society pretends not to touch
while building entire empires on top of them:
Race.
Religion.
Politics.
The holy trinity of Thanksgiving silence.
You bring them up at the wrong table and suddenly everyone becomes a hostage negotiator—
soft voices, careful words, hands hovering near exits that don’t exist.
But I’ve found something.
If I can talk to someone about all three—
really talk, not the curated, LinkedIn-approved version of talking—
and nobody flips the table, throws a drink, or starts quoting something they half-read in 2007…
then I know I’m sitting across from someone rare.
Someone who doesn’t need their beliefs to be bubble-wrapped.
Someone who understands that ideas are not heirlooms—
they’re tools.
And tools get dirty.
Sometimes they break.
Sometimes they get replaced.
Race, religion, politics—
they’re not dangerous because they exist.
They’re dangerous because people treat them like loaded weapons
instead of unfinished conversations.
So yes, those are my topics.
Not because I enjoy chaos—
though I won’t lie, chaos has a certain charm when it’s honest—
but because I’m looking for the few people
who can walk through intellectual fire
without needing to burn someone else to stay warm.
No fists.
No performance.
No algorithmic outrage.
Just two people,
sitting in the wreckage of big ideas,
still curious enough to ask one more question.
If we can do that—
then maybe we’re not as far gone as the loudest voices keep insisting.
And if we can’t?
Well…
there’s always the weather.
You will be told to keep it down.
You will be called edgy, angry, reckless, dangerous, misinformed.
You will be warned to think before you speak,
but the only ones worrying about your volume will be those who fear your voice.
Truth is treated as noise by those who live
securely behind their own proof of lies.
We’ve been told who to hate,
we’ve been told who to trust,
we’ve been told when to mourn,
we’ve been told what to fear.
And with each order, they’ve made the world quieter, emptier, and easier to control.
A country where anger, grief, heartbreak, and dissent are classified as symptoms instead of signals.
Turn it up until they know your name.
Shatter the windows.
Wake the neighbors.
They tell us to be disarmed.
Let’s make sure they can’t sleep
[PAGE 1]
They handed it to us early.
Before we had the language to question it.
A name.
A color.
A place to stand.
Not chosen.
Just… assigned.
[PAGE 3]
You grow into it.
Like a scar—
tight at first,
then normal,
then invisible.
Until someone presses on it.
[PAGE 7]
It’s strange, the way we inherit distance.
Same coffee.
Same tired eyes.
Same quiet fear about time slipping.
Still—
not the same.
So you start looking for proof.
[PAGE 11]
Skin becomes signal.
Language becomes warning.
God becomes territory.
No one says it outright.
They don’t have to.
[PAGE 18]
The program was never loud.
It lives in the small things—
the glance,
the pause,
the almost-word.
Passed down like something sacred
no one remembers buying.
[PAGE 26]
Religion—
the version we were handed—
Feels less like a door
and more like a fence.
Different names for the same sky.
Different rules for the same dust.
[PAGE 31]
Every now and then
it slips.
A conversation that works when it shouldn’t.
A laugh that ignores the lines.
For a second—
none of it exists.
[PAGE 32]
But it comes back.
Because seeing it
doesn’t mean you’re free of it.
It waits
in your first reaction.
Proof it was built deep.
What book could you read over and over again?
Some pages missing
Thought I was him once.
Randle P. McMurphy
laughing too loud
pushing too hard
mistaking noise for control.
—
Turns out—
you can rattle a cage so long
you forget
you’re still inside it.
—
Did my time near the edge.
Not a metaphor.
Real enough
that I still catch myself scanning rooms
for exits
I don’t need anymore.
—
There’s a taste to it.
Not freedom.
Not power.
Something… cheaper.
Easy to confuse the two
when you’re young
or angry
or both.
—
Watched a few go over.
Didn’t come back.
Still walking.
Still talking.
Nothing behind the eyes
but compliance dressed up as calm.
—
One of them smiled at me once—
like he recognized something.
I still don’t know
which side of the glass he thought I was on.
—
I came back.
Not proud of it.
Not ashamed either.
Just… done.
—
People call it discipline.
Feels more like
recognition.
You see the line once
you don’t need to test it every day.
—
I can still go there.
That’s not gone.
Just… unnecessary.
—
There’s a version of me
that solves problems fast.
Doesn’t ask.
Doesn’t wait.
Useful in the wrong world.
Dangerous in the right one.
—
So I keep him close.
Not buried.
Not unleashed.
On a leash
I hold.
Most days.
—
Walk among the civil now.
Nod.
Build.
Keep things moving.
They think it’s reform.
It’s not.
It’s selection.
—
Sometimes I miss it—
not the damage,
just the clarity.
—
Some people never leave the path.
Some never see it.
Some of us—
stepped off
went too far
came back
different.
—
You don’t preach after that.
You don’t wake people up.
You just…
stop sleeping.
—
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest got one thing right—
the loud ones don’t always win.
Sometimes they just
fade out slower.
—
I learned where that road ends.
Didn’t like the ending.
Left early.
Or maybe I was let out.
—
If it all tilts—
if the structure forgets what it’s holding—
I won’t freeze.
I won’t ask.
I won’t wonder.
—
Not because I’m reckless.
Because I remember
how quiet it gets
right before something breaks.
—
Most days—
quiet.
Measured.
Forgettable, even.
—
That’s fine.
—
But not harmless.
Never that.
—
(last line scratched out, still legible)
I could still enjoy it, if I let myself.
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
I Almost Tattooed Rage on My Face
(For Jack & James)
I almost did it.
Sat there long enough to picture it—
ink crawling out from the corners of my eyes
like something that refused to stay buried.
Not decorative.
Not symbolic.
A warning.
The kind of thing that says,
don’t get too close unless you mean it.
I told myself it would be honest.
That it would save time.
No small talk.
No pretending.
You’d see me—
or at least the version of me
I thought was still in charge.
The one who keeps score.
The one who remembers everything.
The one who could burn it all down
and call it justice.
I thought about wearing it
where no one could ignore it.
Right there.
Across the face.
So I wouldn’t have to explain
why my voice goes quiet
when people say things like
“everything happens for a reason.”
So I wouldn’t have to pretend
I don’t still feel it—
that split-second flash
where the world narrows
and something ancient in me
steps forward.
I almost gave that version of me a name.
A uniform.
A permanent place to live.
But then I realized something—
I’ve already worn it.
Not in ink.
In glances.
In silence.
In the way I left rooms
without saying goodbye.
In the way I held onto anger
like it was the last thing
I had left of him.
As if letting go of it
would mean letting go of him.
And that’s the lie, isn’t it?
That rage is proof of love.
That if I soften,
I’ve forgotten.
But he didn’t live like that.
Not really.
He fought, sure.
He burned bright.
But he laughed too easy
for someone who was supposed to carry what I carry now.
He didn’t stay in the worst moment.
So why would I?
I sat there thinking about that—
about putting something permanent on my face
to mark something
that was never meant to be permanent.
And for the first time,
it felt… unnecessary.
Like writing a headline
for a story I’ve already outgrown.
I don’t need to wear rage anymore
to remember him.
I don’t need to prove
how far I could go
if I stopped caring.
Because I do care.
That’s the whole thing.
That’s the part I was trying to hide
behind something sharp.
So no—
I didn’t get the tattoo.
Not on my face.
Not anywhere you can see.
But something is there.
Something quieter.
Not a warning—
a presence.
Not stay back
but walk with me.
And if you look close enough—
not at my skin,
but at the way I move through the world now—
you might see it.
Not the rage.
But what’s left
after I finally stopped needing it
to speak for me.
If you could be someone else for a day, who would you be, and why?
If I could be someone else for a day?
First of all, what a suspicious question.
It presumes I am insufficient.
It suggests there is a better vantage point.
A shinier skull to occupy.
A more impressive mask to borrow.
It feels like a parlor game designed for polite envy.
“Lincoln.”
“Bowie.”
“Einstein.”
“Someone rich.”
But after doing a little shadow work — the kind that makes you sit still longer than you want to — I’ve realized something uncomfortable.
The only people I’ve ever wanted to be… were fragments I recognized in myself.
I don’t want to be Abraham Lincoln.
I want his steadiness under pressure.
I don’t want to be David Bowie.
I want his permission to shapeshift.
I don’t want to be Albert Einstein.
I want his refusal to accept the obvious answer.
And as for Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky —
I don’t want to be him either.
I want the sentence I stole from him and pinned above my internal doorway:
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
That’s not identity theft.
That’s apprenticeship.
After staring at my own shadow long enough — thank you, Carl Jung — I’ve realized something far less romantic than body-swapping.
The fantasy of being someone else is usually just a refusal to finish being yourself.
There is no other man I would rather inhabit for a day.
Not because I’ve perfected this one.
Not because it’s comfortable.
Not because it wins.
But because this one is honest.
And honesty is harder than admiration.
If I became someone else for a day, I would miss the friction that made me.
The grief that carved me.
The strange wiring that lets me see beauty in broken things.
No.
If I could be someone else for a day,
I’d choose to be the part of myself I sometimes avoid.
The shadow that says,
“Above all, don’t lie to yourself.”
And then I’d come back —
unchanged in name,
but slightly less afraid of who I already am.
