[Jouquin Fox]:
Trying to raise spirits like the BearTooth sail
encouraging your drink of choice if that'll
help you achieve it. Scientific embellishments--
what I was raised on-- Gullible Thieves and
Kendrick sparked by Trayvon Martin's death--
George R.R. Martin TV Show adaptions spoken

While angsty me learned how to make potions
out of valerian root and melatonin.
Fiending for some sort of change of mind,
prayer wasn't instant so I searched for the divine.
End of 22-- almost certain nobody's got it figured out,
and with each new day another moral compass demagnetized.
Keeping ties with people who cauterize wounds and keep me alive.
Just trying to do my best.

Only stepping on fascist toes.
Staking out against Bounderbys, neo-nazis, seedy hippy predators,
we @ them on Instagram.
But this past semester in class we all sat in silent shock
when our classmate was misgendered and
Henry the Fifth was allowed a place to bigot.
A couple weeks later I saw the channel five
Charles Dickens days doc,
like when does this shit stop?

Takes reference points and half baked plots,
then heroes turned terf.
Rossetti victim to anglo catholic constraint
and the inability of the times to admit mental health has a place.
Separating art from artist,
she still wrote an anti-capitalist,
pro-womanist poem.
I guess as a stoner I can accept the plot, smile in paradox,
I guess as a human with a brain
I can register goblins and check the behavior.

Guarding against people not completely put together,
learning from the past, staying soft,
and elbowing hate back--
just doing my fucking best.

[Andrew Mbaruk]:
as NASCAR the mind races
the rapper bard scribaceous
under Abelard’s divine aegis
she had her heart dried and framed
as the flowers grown in darkest Eden
Alas, no hard feelings
as Eve brings the fruit to her mouth
a bite engendering the poorhouse
Alas, the groan of constant capital
gears beneath the robot’s Afro
breaking it down as Lydia Davis
redesigning insignia creative as the
worms eating holes in your fruit
your poetry devoted to truth
this empty bed. He’s risen
this MC intrepid as Tintin
swimmin’ in it, this inner liquid
swimmin’ in it, this fish fulfillment
this strange ribbit of the lost frog
arranging English in a hodgepodge
this ancient critic, his soft spot
for language specific to the ocelot
leaving its scent on this sapid track
as its summary or abstract