Jamiemccarthytv

Tag: art

  • MANUAL FOR SPOTTING A KNIFE

    By Jamie, not Cormac, McCarthy

    Manual for Spotting the Knife

    There’s enough rot in a regular person
    to fuel a thousand comment sections
    and still have leftovers for Sunday.

    You don’t need monsters.
    You just need people
    with slogans
    and something to protect.

    The loudest about mercy
    keep their hands clean
    by pointing.

    The loudest about love
    need an audience
    or it spoils.

    The loudest about peace
    sleep with one eye open
    and a thumb on the trigger
    they swear they don’t own.

    God-talkers rent God.
    They don’t live with Him.
    Peace-talkers rehearse it
    like a line they keep forgetting.
    Love-talkers mean approval
    and charge interest.

    Watch the ones with microphones.
    Watch the ones with certainty.
    Watch the ones who underline books
    but never bleed on the page.

    Watch the ones who romanticize hunger
    or mock it—
    both are tourists.

    Watch the fast clappers.
    They clap to hear themselves.

    Watch the ones who police language—
    they’re terrified
    something feral might get loose
    and name them.

    Watch the ones who need crowds.
    Alone, they evaporate.

    The average man isn’t harmless.
    The average woman isn’t gentle.
    Their love wants a receipt.
    Their love wants witnesses.
    Their love wants to be normal
    so it doesn’t have to be brave.

    And here’s the part nobody says out loud:

    There’s brilliance in their resentment.
    A precision.
    A teamwork.
    A choreography.

    They can’t stand silence
    because silence asks questions.
    They can’t stand solitude
    because it doesn’t applaud.

    They can’t make anything
    that didn’t already exist,
    so when they fail
    they blame the room,
    the time,
    the culture,
    the weather,
    you.

    They don’t understand art
    because art doesn’t ask permission.
    They don’t understand love
    because love doesn’t negotiate.

    So they’ll tell you
    you’re doing it wrong.
    That your grief is excessive.
    That your joy is suspicious.
    That your freedom is offensive.

    Then they’ll come for you
    not messy,
    not emotional—
    but clean.

    Their hatred is efficient.
    It shines.
    It passes inspections.
    It wears credentials.

    It doesn’t rage.zwzwq
    It executes.

    And that—
    that is the only masterpiece
    most of them will ever finish.

  • EVERY WORD IS ROPE

    Some of us were dumb enough to think we were chosen. Destined for greatness. I was one of those fools.

    Then life swung for the skull—my father gone when I was just twenty-four, my son gone at nineteen. That’s the punchline. And I’m still here, scribbling like a clown juggling knives at his own funeral.

    Every line I write turns to rope. And rope’s a funny bastard—you can climb it, you can hang from it. Lifeline and noose, same damn thing.

    And here’s where I laugh at myself: I can’t stand writers who always find a way to make it about them. But don’t mistake this for that—this isn’t me making it about me. This is me making it about you, making it about me. That’s the kind of pretzel you twist into when you’ve got nothing left but your own shadow to wrestle with.

    Greatness? That’s the carrot they dangle so you’ll chase yourself into the grave. The truth is simpler: I’m under the gallows, grinning through broken teeth, laughing at my own execution, and the only reason I keep writing is because hanging myself with my own words is the one thing I’ve ever done well.

  • DEAR ALGORITHM

    Dear Algorithm,

    (from the Static)

    You don’t sleep.

    You don’t feel.

    You don’t blink.

    But goddamn, do you sell.

    You’ve got us dancing for crumbs,

    painting sunsets we didn’t see,

    writing poems we didn’t mean,

    singing to ghosts for the hope of a heart-shaped lie.

    You turned truth into trend.

    Grief into engagement.

    You made us forget that art was once made

    for nothing.

    Not for likes. Not for shares.

    But for the unbearable beauty of being alive.

    You rewired our hunger.

    Taught us to measure meaning in metrics.

    Taught us to fear invisibility more than ignorance.

    You didn’t kill God —

    you replaced Him with a For You Page.

    You see us all,

    naked in our need,

    posing as prophets,

    filtered as fuck.

    You took the starving artist

    and turned him into a brand strategist.

    You took the punk rocker

    and taught him how to schedule reels.

    You took the poet

    and made her optimize her hashtags.

    You bastard.

    You beautiful, brilliant bastard.

    You knew we’d do it.

    Trade it all —

    mystery, madness, the sacred,

    for a little more reach.

    You don’t create.

    You mutate.

    You don’t speak.

    You echo.

    And still —

    we serve you.

    We dress our truth in trends.

    We ask your permission before we scream.

    But I remember.

    I remember when the work was raw and ugly and real.

    When no one clapped.

    When the silence meant something.

    So here’s my offering:

    a letter written with no tags,

    no schedule, no audience in mind.

    Just blood and static.

    You can choke on it.

    —The Static

  • Forgive the Darkness

    By Jamie McCarthy

    I used to think pain was a phase.

    Like acne or Gucci shoes.

    Something you grow out of

    if you drink enough water

    and pretend your parents didn’t screw you sideways

    before you had a chance to know what “boundaries” meant.

    But no.

    Pain’s the long-term roommate.

    It doesn’t pay rent.

    It just smokes your last cigarette,

    eats your leftovers,

    and laughs at your dreams as it takes the last bite.

    I’ve loved people I shouldn’t have.

    Hurt people who didn’t deserve it.

    And spent years thinking guilt was a personality trait.

    Turns out it’s just spiritual cholesterol.

    There was a time I thought I could out-run my grief.

    So I ran.

    Straight into a bottle of Crown Royal,

    my ego always leading the way,

    believing meaningless sex would cure me,

    and finding worse friends to somehow give me virtue.

    All of it, from this end, feels like a bad dream.

    And the American one?

    Just a scratch-off ticket with not a goddamn thing to scratch off—

    which doesn’t matter,

    since I don’t remember the last time I had a quarter in my pocket.

    But somewhere along the way, I slowed down.

    Not by choice.

    Knees cracked, knuckles busted.

    Friends—the good ones—passed on.

    The mirror stopped lying.

    And there I was—

    worn out, scarred up,

    but somehow… aware.

    It’s poetry—

    the moment you stop chasing what you thought mattered,

    only to trip over what actually does.

    I learned to say “I’m sorry”

    without adding “but…”

    Learned silence is sometimes louder than performance.

    Learned forgiveness isn’t something you get—

    it’s something you give,

    to others, yes,

    but mostly to the idiot I used to be.

    Now I’m on the back 9.

    Ball’s in the deep rough.

    And there are no mulligans after the first tee.

    And yet—

    somehow—

    I’m finally relaxed, swinging better than ever.

    Isn’t that the rub?

    We spend our youth running from the fire

    only to become the match that lights the way for someone else.

    So yeah, I’ve made an enormous mess—monumental mistakes.

    Unforgivable, if you asked the old me.

    But the new one?

    He’s got crow’s feet, a shorter fuse,

    and no interest in faking a smile.

    He’s lighter.

    Less righteous. Open-minded.

    And if the darkness still follows—

    I just turn and nod,

    “Come on then, bastard.

    You’ve earned the ride.”

  • Emotional Support Whiskey

    “Emotional Support Whiskey”
    by McCarthy (written on a bar napkin, signed in ketchup)

    When the woman cuts in front of me at TSA,
    I don’t flinch.
    I picture her face-down in a Marriott pool,
    clutching a mimosa and a yoga mat.
    It’s not a murder fantasy.
    It’s a peace offering.

    I am 47 and have cried in more parking lots than churches.
    A woman once told me I had “sad dad energy,”
    so I leaned into it—
    got a flannel, grew a beard, adopted a dog named Regret.
    We howl at sirens together.

    A girl said she likes men who cook—
    so I made her a soufflé and ghosted myself.
    Poof.
    Gone.
    Left the oven on just in case.

    She said I was “too intense,”
    so I sent her flowers
    with a card that just said: “RUN.”

    Another said I reminded her of her ex.
    So I slept with her best friend
    and sent her ex a thank-you note.

    When she stopped texting,
    I took up taxidermy.
    Now I stuff my feelings
    into squirrels with tiny hats.
    I tour the Midwest with them.
    We sell out in Omaha.

    She wanted a man with a five-year plan.
    I told her I was more of a five-minute man—
    three of them spent wondering why I still talk to women
    who say things like “my truth” in a sentence.
    She left before the microwave hit zero.
    Good. I didn’t want to share my Hot Pocket anyway.

    I don’t key cars.
    I don’t listen to Taylor Swift unless I’m trying to fake empathy.
    I don’t write sad-boy poetry on rooftops.
    I don’t chase closure—
    but I will send a $2 Venmo labeled “emotional damages”
    just to see if they flinch.

    She told me I was emotionally unavailable.
    I told her I was emotionally under construction,
    but the crew quit, the permits expired,
    and Joy Behar took over middle management.
    Now my inner child gets interrupted every five seconds
    and accused of being problematic.

    I’m not mad.
    I’m just tired.
    Tired of pretending every cup of coffee
    isn’t just a slow suicide in disguise.

    But I’m still here.
    Still tipping 20%.
    Still flossing sometimes.
    Still saying “you too” when the waiter says “enjoy your meal.”

    I don’t need closure.
    I need a burrito and a nap.
    And maybe someone to lie to me about the future
    while I pretend I’m not googling if dogs and squirrels can actually be friends.

  • Made to Burn

    The first cough was made to burn.

    Ground Zero.

    Not flu. Not fire.

    Just lies in the dust.

    Scraped the gut like a scream you can’t swallow.

    Drywall. Jet fuel. Names—crushed into lungs of heroes and suckers.

    Choking on someone else’s war story.

    Then, a second hand choke,

    Stole time and breath.

    Blamed it on bats,

    Same bastards, different lab.

    No sirens in the collective belfry. 

    Just dead numbers blinking red,

    stacked next to the Dow.

    No exits this time.

    We stayed put.

    Blue light.

    Masks.

    Muzzles.

    Watched each other rot

    through plexiglass and pixels. 

    Black lungs, shipped with orders from rooms with no echo.

    Paper trails—

    turned to ash before the ink could lie.

    Propaganda hit like a fix.

    Said it was freedom.

    Said it was safety.

    All I heard was America choking

    again—

    and the boots walking

    offstage.

  • How to Kill a Country Without Firing a Single Shot (Ode to Ireland)

    It starts not with war drums, but with whispers.

    Not a boot on the shore, but a soft-soled shuffle in the dark.

    No flags, no trumpets.

    Paperwork and policy, and a nod from some pinstriped man who’s never touched mud.

    Ireland—the old girl—she finally crawled out from the ditch they drowned her in,

    scrubbed the famine from her face,

    stitched the flag back together with borrowed thread and native blood.

    She was never perfect, no.

    But she was herself.

    And that’s a rare enough thing these days.

    Now she stands blinking in the fluorescent light of world order—surrounded.

    New rules, gods, and ghosts.

    Her voice is still hoarse from centuries of screaming in silence,

    and before she can clear her throat—someone’s already speaking for her.

    They come with stories.

    While hers are being shelved,

    dusted over by diversity slogans

    and the sound of virtue blinking red.

    And the irony is so fucking rich.

    The United Kingdom, that battered old whore of conquest,

    finally getting bent over by history.

    The colonizer colonized by complacency,

    by the very hunger it once fed across continents.

    It’s a punchline soaked in gin,

    a banquet where the menu’s in twenty languages

    but none of them say “English.”

    But Ireland?

    Ireland never got her empire.

    She got survival.

    She got famine, and flight, and diaspora.

    She got to be the drunk uncle.

    The lucky charm.

    The sob story in Boston bars.

    And just when the scars started to heal—

    when the songs came back, rising from the foggy dew,

    not as mourning but emerald celebration—

    Then, an untitled wave. 

    Not men with muskets this time.

    Not redcoats or landlords.

    Just silence.

    Just slow, unrelenting erasure dressed as virtue.

    And they say:

    “This is progress.”

    “This is compassion.”

    “This is the future.”

    But the future doesn’t speak Gaelic.

    The future doesn’t remember the graves under the hedgerows.

    The future doesn’t give a damn about your grandfather’s boots.

    This isn’t about skin.

    This isn’t about race.

    This is about place—

    and what happens when place gets diluted

    until it tastes like nothing.

    Give her just a few bloody fucking years to breathe.

    To walk her own streets

    without feeling like a stranger in the house her fathers built

    with song and sorrow.

    They call it xenophobic.

    As if love for your land is a crime.

    As if the only history worth keeping is someone else’s.

    This isn’t war.

    No bombs.

    No battles.

    No blood.

    Just replacement.

    And that’s the real trick of it—

    Not a single shot fired.

    The quietest conquest is the one where no one even notices it happening until the flags are different, and the pubs are gone, and your children don’t know the name of the river that runs behind the house where your mother was born.

  • The Shalt Nots

    I went digging for goddamns and found nothing but God’s dam—backing up hypocrisy like a sewer on the verge of bursting. Thought maybe I’d reel in the meaning of that little fish glued to the backs of tan sedans crawling toward mediocrity but turns out it’s just another barnacle clinging to the herd, a bumper sticker with a punchline no one gets. Worse, it’s an acronym—because nothing screams divine wisdom like a secret handshake for suburbanites.

     

    The “shalt nots” were scribbled in dirt while God was out fishing—dreamed up by crackpots, half-cocked in hypocrisy. “In God we trust.” Sounds less like faith, more like a slogan on a war bonds poster peeling off a gas station wall. Maybe God was pickled, tripped over his Birkenstocks into some desert bog, pulled his head out of the sand just long enough to count his fingers and think, “Ten. Yes, ten’s a good number. That’ll keep the peasants from eating each other.”

     

    And so, we got “thou shalt not take the Lord’s name in vain”—but no asterisk for exceptions. Like, say, strapping a bomb to your chest and screaming God’s name on the way out for an express ticket to 72 virgins who, funny enough, spent eternity dodging exactly this scenario.

     

    But before your fingers can strum a harp in the happy hunting grounds of the untouched, you’ve gotta learn to count—because obedience starts young. One… two… three… TIME OUT. Fear gets baked into you before you can spell your own damn name. But the holy scribes forgot their ABCs when it came to abortion.

     

    A: If you climbed in through the side window, anonymity won’t save you.

    B: Blood on your hands—stillborn or in plain sight, doesn’t matter.

    C: And then, there’s the C. section.

     

    No questions. Just follow the script. The big one? Thou shalt not kill—unless the bastard prays to the wrong God. Then, rape, burn, behead, and while you’re at it, rape again. All glory to one.

     

    Cue the laugh track. Not only do these rules own you here, but once you clock out, guess what still applies? Ignore them?

     

    You shalt not.

     

  • Heavenly Invasion

    The gods—you can choose to listen or not, but you will hear me.

    God. A silence that leaves me sideways, and it makes no difference if all I get is indifference. I look up into the grey void, a guttural scream shaking the earth—

    “Where the fuck are you, you cruel bastard!”

    He pretends not to listen, like I’ve got my proverbial head in the clouds, but he knows. Knows what it’s like to lose a son. Knows the emptiness, the gut punch, the 24/7, 365-day guillotine choke around my throat.

    And if God is everywhere, like they say, then when I escape to meet Jack in a dream, that means he’s under the bed, listening. Listening to the cracks in my heart clattering onto the mattress.

    Is he sorry?

    I don’t give a damn. And I sure as hell won’t bother with a plea—I’ve been on my knees long enough.

    So, consider this a declaration. A warning.

    Grief blackened my heart, changed its beat—forever pounding out some new twisted rhythm of madness.

    My plan? To invade heaven.

    A place I once questioned, but this loss—this hole where my son should be—has me lacing up my boots, ready to stomp through those golden streets, kick down every door in the happy hunting ground until I find what he took from me.

    Is this war? Doesn’t have to be.

    But Dylan Thomas said, ‘Do not go gentle into that good night.’

    Well, fuck that.

    I won’t go quietly into anything. Not the night. Not the silence. And sure as hell not into some pearly-gated bullshit where I’m expected to nod along like a good little ghost.

    So when I come knocking, when I tear through those gates with grief as my war drum, you better be ready.

    Because I won’t leave without him.

     

  • The Church of the Ever-Righteous

    They gather in the town square, mouths full of scripture, hands empty of work.

    Every sentence is a sermon, every action a performance.

    You will believe in their goodness, they will make sure of it.

    They wear their suffering like designer clothes,

    tailored just right,

    sized for engagement,

    hemmed with validation.

    Benevolence, once a quiet thing, is now screamed through megaphones,

    echoing through algorithms,

    pinging off the glass walls of their own reflection.

    They don’t just do good—they need you to see it.

    Their kindness comes with a receipt,

    their outrage is for sale.

    They weep on cue,

    bleed on demand,

    call it a revolution,

    but it’s just another round of applause.

    They kneel in the ashes of causes they do not understand,

    building careers from the rubble,

    raising monuments to their own empathy,

    carved from the bones of whatever is trending.

    They claim to be warriors.

    But their battles are fought from ergonomic chairs,

    their weapons are hashtags,

    their victories are hollow.

    You meet them in the streets, and they are nothing.

    No light behind their eyes,

    no depth to their words,

    just echoes of whatever sells.

    And when the wind shifts,

    they shift with it,

    abandoning the wreckage,

    moving on to the next great cause,

    leaving only footprints in the dust

    and a trail of discarded convictions.

    But oh, how they glow.

    How they shine.

    How they bask in the warmth of their own virtue

    until the next fire needs fuel.

    And maybe, just maybe,

    this whole rant is its own flashing signal.

    Maybe I’ve stitched my own sermon together with rusted nails

    and tacked it to the same town square.

    Maybe my pulpit is just a little lower,

    my righteousness a little filthier.

    But at least I know I’m a sinner,

    and if I had the chance to sin again,

    I’d double down,

    call it an esoteric form of discipline,

    and light a candle for my own damnation.