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Writer's pictureTravis White

Russian Novels and American Lessons


I learned from Russian literatures how a nation can rot

Theirs is still festering

I learned from Nietzsche that if you stare into the abyss you have a chance of becoming the thing you fight

And oh how we are slowly dying

The spiritual death of a nation goes like this

You

You the people give up on each other

And not hate we always hate each other but we give up on the idea of something beyond us called country, nation, god

As we destroy it with our tongues

We profess that we are the victim, whoa persecution grants us special access to the truth

And we must supplant the normal order for a more rational order

One built by…. You.

What foolish thoughts unable to work with the people in your own life your ideas are nothing

Your hopes and aspirations at changing the order of things is exactly why a nation fails

You call every institution a trap

Rules are no longer good enough

At least for you

Other people are to be punished for their disagreement with you

Rules are rules after all

And this is a poem about you who ever is experiencing this poem

Here is the lesson of deep time

Humans are the most violent animal

We are the cute critter who are everything

We invented language and society to flee from our own violent nature

You start fucking with those because you think you are smarter than them you are only doing one thing

Destroying the floodgates of human carnage

Lift the rug up look at the bodies we swept under to make things pretty for ourselves

You want the lesson of the ages

Fundamentally we are a fucked up creature

on our own we are terrible

And it’s only in as much as you learn how humans have dealt with this truth for 15,000 years that you are capable of correcting what is about to happen

Because once it does you’ll learn the truth of this poem

Society falls because people give up on it

No country no home

Just a house in danger from everything

When it goes down do you want weapons or art

What a funny question whoms answer reveals that this poem is honest and smart


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